I'm typing to you from a rural WISP; 5GHz, 12/1 MBps asymmetric service. My link involves about 3 wireless hops in my ISP before I get to wired infrastructure. It's not terrible and is definitely good enough for streaming video and playing games. I do wish I had wired service though.
The biggest problem is the latency. I'm about 40ms from the edge of my ISP before I get to the rest of the Internet (compare 5ms for wired urban Internet.) Also, as you allude to, with a smaller ISP it can often be the CEO's nephew in charge of stuff and professionalism suffers.
My older service was 900 MHz 1/0.25 MBps service. That was pretty awful, just too slow to do anything modern with it. The nice thing about 900 MHz is you don't need a clear line of sight.
The biggest problem is the latency. I'm about 40ms from the edge of my ISP before I get to the rest of the Internet (compare 5ms for wired urban Internet.) Also, as you allude to, with a smaller ISP it can often be the CEO's nephew in charge of stuff and professionalism suffers.
My older service was 900 MHz 1/0.25 MBps service. That was pretty awful, just too slow to do anything modern with it. The nice thing about 900 MHz is you don't need a clear line of sight.