Funny you say that, because my comment was actually in reference to a guy from Ukraine that the US company I work for has employed several times. He would just suddenly disappear for a week or more, and then when he finally came back, on one occasion, he hadn't been able to connect to the company because of the circumstances I mentioned above.
Sounds like falsehood. If he really wanted to go online, lots of ways were available: CDMA 3G [cheap, though requires approx. $200 hw expenses], GSM GPRS/EDGE [usually expensive], dialup (relatively cheap), internet cafes (quite cheap), TV cable company, other ISPs.. so...