"There are still many unserved areas -- we are trying to help, but there are capital constraints," he said. He prefers that each of his transmission towers have at least 25 users.

One of the people whom fixed wireless was not able to serve was Mark Haaland, who lives on a farm nine miles from Reynolds, N.D., population 350.

"Dial-up was so slow, because of the bad lines, that it could take an hour to download e-mail," he recalled. "We tried wireless, but trees blocked the signal, so the only real option was to use a satellite service. It's not the cheapest way to go, and it will run slower than cable or DSL, but it does the job."

Haaland chose WildBlue Communications Inc. in Denver, mostly because its modem supported multiple computers. WildBlue has been offering its service for about 18 months and now has about 100,000 users and is adding another 10,000 monthly, said Vice President Brad Greenwald. The company owns two satellites that together could eventually support 1 million users, he said. Its entry-level service is the most popular, offering 512Kbit/sec. downstream and 128Kbit/sec. upstream, for $49.95 per month. The subscriber's dish antenna costs about $300 upfront, and installation is about another $200. (Haaland recalled spending about $600 to buy the ground equipment and mount his antenna.)

"There are about 15 million homes or small offices in the U.S. that don't have access to cable modems or DSL, so we developed this satellite service to reach them," Greenwald noted.