There's also HughesNet from Hughes Network Systems LLC in Germantown, Md. Spokeswoman Judy Blake said the service has about 300,000 users and the number is growing at about 10,000 per month. Residential plans start at $59.99 per month for 700Kbit/sec. download speed and 128Kbit/sec. upload. The hardware costs upwards of $400. Unlike WildBlue, Hughes leases satellite capacity from other carriers.

The StarBand service from Spacenet Inc. in McLean, Va., also starts at $49.95 per month, for 512Kbit/sec. downstream and 128Kbit/sec. upstream, with hardware costing about $300, explains spokesman Jeff Carl. However, the service has only about 30,000 users and, being marketed mostly to businesses, does not claim to be growing, he added. It, too, is based on leased satellite capacity and does cover Alaska and Hawaii.

Clarendon College's Thompson said he didn't consider satellite service when he was looking for broadband Internet connectivity five years ago, because at the time the upstream leg for satellite service was routed through dial-up modems. But in the past two years, cable and DSL have also reached his town.

Indeed, Horrigan at the Pew Internet Project noted that the rate for using fixed wireless and satellite service is the same in both rural and urban settings -- about 5 percent. As with urban users, the rest of the rural broadband users are nearly evenly split between cable and DSL subscribers.

But if both urban and rural users appear indistinguishable in the statistics, it's probably because, as multiple sources noted, there is no hard and fast way to tell urban and rural settings apart. Even in urban areas there can be residents without cable access who are also too far from a telephone company central office to get DSL.