The place i grew up cable wasn't very common. Power and phone on poles, everyone lived far apart and there was only a foot or two of soil before you hit bedrock. The phone lines sucked so much that dialing into BBS and eventually dialup internet was problematic.

I ended up working a summer for an ISP where we used point to point radios to connect to towers 20-40 miles across a lake. Was amazing when people started getting 10mbps. This was all before cellular tethering and satellite was viable options.