ptions today. Two services, DIRECWAY and StarBand, provide two-way satellite-based Internet access, using the two major direct broadcast satel- lite systems owned by Hughes and EchoStar. These systems provide service at data rates of about 400 to 500 kilobits per second and are principally attractive to households in rural areas that are not able to receive DSL or cable modem service.7 The next generation of satellite systems may offer higher transmission rates and much more system capacity. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has licensed two other radio services, multichannel multipoint distribution service (MMDS) and local multipoint distribution service (LMDS), which also can be used to provide wireless Internet access to fixed locations. MMDS was originally a wireless alternative to cable television. MMDS technology can serve cus- tomers within a range of about 15 miles of a base station and requires a line- of-sight path between the antenna at the residence and the antenna at the MMDS service provider's base station. Sprint and WorldCom have been the principal licensees of this spectrum, but both appear to have abandoned any attempt to use it to deliver residential broadband access. 8 LMDS oper- ates at frequencies ten times higher than those used by MMDS, which means its transmissions are often impeded by rainfall. Unlicensed radio bands provide yet another form of high-speed Internet access. A few hundred smaller Internet service providers (ISPs) have used this unlicensed spectrum to provide links to their customers. Typically, such systems transmit data at rates of about 1 megabit per second and can The Broadband Revolution serve customers at ranges of up to 15 miles. Short-range communications using wireless local area network (LAN) technologies are much less likely to experience harmful interference than longer-range systems. This tech- nology, popularly called WiFi, has spread very rapidly and has been de- ployed to provide broadband Internet access at airports, restaurants, and college campus