A Part of the Maine

I forgot to mention in my post below on the Camden conference about the article I wrote a few weeks ago for O'Reilly Networks's Wireless DevCenter about an ISP on the coast of Maine that's extended its already good dial-up presence with wireless links offering high-speed service around the coast. Even better, they use wireless to create satellite (no joke intended) offices with local dial-up in smaller towns to which it would be a toll call for residents to reach them, or where they otherwise couldn't afford to place a POP (point of presence).
The reason you don't see more local numbers in rural or less-populated areas is that the ISP must pay the local telco that does long-haul fees to carry its traffic from an office in the small town (the local exchange) back to the ISP's HQ or onto the ISP's ATM network. Otherwise, residents must make a long-distance call.
This ISP's tactic for inching their way inland is to put up wireless towers to carry traffic to and from the smaller exchange. They can relay this, too, running tower after tower to bridge traffic up to some reasonable maximum - which could be as much as a couple hundred miles. Latency would be high at that distance. Latency is the time it takes for water to get from one end of the pipe to other when you turn on the tap, not the amount of water you get once it arrives.