High Speed Country Style

I work from home a lot, and so high speed internet feels as necessary to my livelihood as my brain. AFTER we signed the papers which confirmed our new ownership of our country home, I discovered that high speed in the country isn't perceived as a necessity and is therefore pretty tricky to acquire affordably. I suppose I should have spent more time reading Harrowsmith magazine, because Tom Cruickshank wrote an editorial on just that topic quite some time ago.
It was an annoying struggle just to find out that I had very little hope for high speed to begin with. I won't bother to elaborate on the fruitlessness of dealing with our utility companies in my search for hookup ( 3 confirmations it was possible using various methods involving wireless, 3 visits from technicians, 3 announcements of failure due to barns /trees / silos in the way), or the frustration in dealing with 20-year old customer service reps who assured me that being billed for high speed despite my lack of such was because in fact I SHOULD be able to receive it....
A call to a local cable / phone / internet provider had resulted in the announcement that EVENTUALLY there would be cable and internet access to my area, but the hookup fee would be about $2000 because they would be running the lines out to our end of nowhere just for the few of us living out here (who were just silly to be living out here anyway, was the implication).
I ended up with dial-up for the short term but when I realized that just downloading my emails would take about 1 1/2 hours, I bit the bullet and got satellite. It was expensive to install - paying for the dish and the receiver and the guy to set it all up, but the monthly rate has been almost on par with cable or phone high speed. The service itself has been OK - a few glitches during blizzards, but not moreso than our satellite TV. It also offers up what I've been calling "high-ish speed", but it's better than dialup. Unfortunately, I also had to sign a 3-yr contract.
So you will understand my dismay when I noticed the trucks bearing the logo of the local cable/ phone / internet company on it, working alongside the road. It turns out that they are running the lines out here, after all (and without my $2000). Slowly they have worked their way out to our house.
On Wednesday there was a knock on my door and a young man in a safety vest announced that he needed to install a conduit to my house (for my eventual hookup, I guess) and was my leachbed in the way?
The conduit was installed in a couple of hours without any digging on our property at all. They have a digger which basically tunnels underground, parallel to the surface, and it seems it pulls the conduit that will eventually hold the wiring with it. The machine itself is remarkably small and quiet. Apparently this is how they have been installing the conduit down our country road ( I had wondered not only how there was so little digging, but how they could be installing it during the height of winter), just burrowing under the ground from driveway to driveway.
I haven't yet received any fliers telling me about the wonderful new service soon to be available in my area, so I'm not sure when I'll have to call the satellite company to break my contract. But it seems to be my luck that we chose to buy in an area which is close enough to 'bedroom community development' that the rural folk have even been noticed. Of course, it could also mean that the developers are eying our end nowhere as possible subdivisions in the future, so that offers up a whole host of other problems. In the interim I'm sure that there will be plenty of families with home businesses and kids (who up to now have relied on antennaes, dialup or satellite for their pop culture) who will sign up so with any luck I won't have to remortgage the house to pay for the service.