The telephone companies have been criticized as being too slow in pursuing high-speed Internet customers. Cable has done better, notably Cox Communications and Time Warner, analysts said. The cable industry has spent some $80 billion to upgrade its systems for high-speed Internet access, including $10 billion this year, according to the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, a trade group.

Cable's larger and faster investment is paying off. Nationally, according to the Yankee Group, 68 percent of households with broadband access use cable modems, while 31 percent use DSL, for digital subscriber line service, the telephone companies' competing product.

Figures are not available on the percentage of consumers who use broadband in the Salt Lake region, which is part of the 200-mile Wasatch Front. Some analysts say the percentage may be higher than average because of a strong emphasis on education. But in other ways, the Wasatch Front, which stretches the length of northern Utah, abutting the stunning mountain range, is typical of the challenges facing companies, as well as the desires and frustrations of consumers.

In countries like South Korea and Japan, high-speed Internet service is aided by densely populated urban settings. But the communities in the Salt Lake region, like those in much of the United States, are relatively spread out. To connect them means doing something that is labor-intensive: putting a lot of new holes in the ground.

Evidence of the cable industry's investment is the Comcast construction site, a network hub just off I-15, on a dusty spot 15 minutes south of Salt Lake City just behind the parking lot of the Flying J gas station.

Technicians in hard hats work around the clock at the site, deploying a crucial component of broadband access: fiber-optic lines, which carry high-speed Internet access over blips of light. The company is laying 1,500 miles of new lines, part of the multimillion-dollar upgrade of its Salt Lake City network.

Once they place the lines, they must connect them to create a seamless network. Technicians work in 12-hour shifts to splice the fragile glass lines together with a $35,000 machine called a fusion splicer.

Comcast has completed similar upgrades at 30 other hub sites along the 200-mile Wasatch Front, and it plans to upgrade an additional seven sites. Comcast now makes broadband available to 80 percent of the region's population, and it expects to be at 90 percent by year-end, including the neighborhood in Sandy where Washburn lives.

The company is completing a $110 million investment in the region. Gary Waterfield, area vice president for Comcast, said the company's investment should have a big payoff, given the demand for broadband in Utah. The company charges $52.99 a month for Internet access, plus a $3-a-month modem lease; the price drops to $42.95 a month for people who order cable television service, too.