Wireless is definitely the way to go, and depending on the local topography the range can be surprisingly good. My astronomy club has an observatory in Blue Mountains, ON and we have a wireless link to an ISP in downtown Collingwood more than ~30km (20mi) away.
The VOIP phone is the way to go as well, because most plans include ludicrous long-distance minutes for $10-15 and unlimited for $20-25. If you don’t mind doing all the configuration and management yourself, you can get phone service for $1.00 per month plus one cent per minute for all calls in North America. My local and 1-800 numbers cost me a total of $2.50/month plus talk time.
Another option if you can’t get a CD is to drive to a public library or a coffee shop in the nearest town. Most coffee shops don’t mind you hanging around if you order something every couple of hours. Go with an independent shop if you do that, though, because a lot of the chains will slow your connection if you do big downloads. OTOH some places have connections that are fast enough to download the CD in less than 30 minutes. As always, YMMV.
I used to play around with police scanners a lot and had two outdoor antennas both had amps on them One was Omni directional no gain except through my 10 db amp. The other was an old UHF/VHF TV antenna {redneck Yagi} that I built a bracket for to put the elements straight up and down. With that one I could pick up police in Indiana on lower VHF range but nothing even 15 miles behind me in Knoxville. That's where the major tower farms are.
I'm up high enough though that if anything is north west of me I should be able to get it and I know where most of the towers are.
I gotta keep one land line for medical reasons. I have two one is for the computer. My wife has serious health issues and the phone has to be simple, reliable, and work during loss of utility power. She picks up the phone hits one button and calls my cell when I'm out.