Within those states, it contracts with Internet service providers, which resell Qwest's service under their own brand names.

One customer is Matt Duhamel, who recently moved to the Salt Lake area from Idaho. Until recently, he couldn't get broadband at his Pinnacle Highland apartment, and found the situation "quite irritating." As soon as DSL became available, he signed up. He likes the service, but isn't keen on spending $60 a month. The trouble is, he doesn't have much choice.

"As soon as Comcast gets here, I'll probably see which is cheaper," he said.

The relative merits of DSL and cable modem service are the subject of some debate, but industry analysts say customer satisfaction is generally high with both.

Yet some people can't get either one. They have paved the way for a new breed: the wireless entrepreneurs — people like Steven McGhie, who are unlikely to overtake established telecommunications companies but are eager to give them a run for the money.

"If I had the capital, I could take these guys on no problem," said McGhie, 36, who started his wireless Internet provider, Utah Broadband, last year. The company serves Washburn and several hundred other local customers, who pay $39.95 a month and up for service.

McGhie, who lives in Sandy, started with humble aspirations. "I was frustrated because there was no high-speed access," he said. He set up a system, figuring that he could sell access to his neighbors because "there are a lot of other people in my boat."

Washburn was eager to listen to his sales pitch because using the Internet over regular phone lines was slow, and often unreliable, when she tried to download larger files like pictures.

"I tried to e-mail a picture to my daughter at college the other day, and it never did go. I got disconnected," Washburn said. "That was the last straw."

As a result, McGhie was up on the Washburns' roof, attaching an antenna and trying to avoid one of the great hazards of wireless access in Utah: the trees, notably the quaking aspens. For the antenna to send and receive signals to the Internet, it must have a clear line of sight to an antenna tower a mile away on the ridge. There can be no intervening trees or even shrubbery.

The limitations of radio frequency technology are one reason wireless access has been slow to catch on. Another is the cost of installation. The Motorola antenna that McGhie is installing costs around $400, but he said most customers considered that price worthwhile.

Washburn agreed. "It's been wonderful," she said. "My husband's been on eBay; my sons have been playing games. One son had a research report on owls, and he got stuff off the Internet for that, too."