Middle mile?  No.  The problem is last-mile for many thousands of us that *don't* live in the bush.
I live 7 miles from downtown Fairbanks.
A 1mbit DSL connection from ACS is the only thing available, and I'm grandfathered in.  If you were to buy my neighbors house, you'd have nothing.

Just ran a test.  Currently getting:
0.38Mb/s down.
0.19Mb/s up.

(Cue the people telling me to do XY and Z to "fix" the problem, which exists on the DSLAM, that ACS recognizes and won't fix because it's not worth it to them.)

To those of you complaining about crappy connections whilst living hundreds of miles from any manner of terrestrial connection need to get over yourselves.