I'll say this as someone who lives last mile (half or even a quarter if you want to be technical). Television provides higher quality(lower latency) and more stable transmissions. Unfortunately, we're situated just outside of the cable co's reach, so have to deal with a satellite provider for TV and a Telecomm for phone/internet.

We spend $80 a month on a 756kb/s ADSL line and phone service. At one point, we had 4 rooms with televisions, this isn't something that could be handled with internet speeds such as that. When the digital transition happened we went from 7 basic channels down to 2 OTA; up until that point we had no need for an outside provider. If we could access the cable co's infrastructure, the bills would be much lower, 60-70%, and the internet access would be much better.

We need to fight against the communications industry for adequate infrastrucure before dismantling them under the assumption people already have adequate access.

Edit: I'm not the author of the post, I just shared it.