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Starpower is offering discounts for customers who sign up for more than one service. For example, customers who sign up for long-distance telephone service pay 9 cents a minute. But if they also sign up for Starpower's $19.95-a-month dial-up Internet service, the company permanently waives a $4.50 monthly long-distance service charge and gives subscribers a $25 prepaid calling card. Starpower will roll out a multimillion-dollar ad campaign this summer, including one billboard that depicts a statue of Lenin with its head in a noose and the headline "No Empire Lasts Forever." Pepco isn't RCN's only utility partner. The Princeton, N.J.-based company owns 51 percent of a joint venture with Boston Edison that will spend $300 million to expand the utility's existing 200-mile fiber ring to cover 48 cities around Boston. The venture is already offering Internet and cable TV services in the Boston suburb of Somerville, and is preparing to launch in nearby Arlington and Newton. "We've already seen an impact," says Mike Monahan, a Boston Edison spokesman. "Time Warner increased [cable TV] rates 10 percent everyplace [in their Boston system] except one, Somerville." Community-owned utilities are also entering the voice, video and Internet businesses. Because competition is slim in the mostly rural areas in which they operate, many have been more successful than their larger counterparts in signing up customers, if not in making a significant profit. For two years, Basin Electric Power Cooperative, a Bismarck, N.D., member-owned utility with 1 million customers in eight Midwestern states, has operated BTI Net, one of Bismarck's largest ISPs. Basin also sells business Internet access and Web hosting services, and resells Internet access to a dozen of the 117 smaller rural energy providers that are co-op members. Costs for technical support, billing and administration have been higher than expected, but Basin's Internet businesses are breaking even, says Jim Wilson, BTI's contracts administration manager. Currently, Basin's Internet revenues are less than 1 percent of its $436 million in electric revenues, Wilson says. A year-old joint venture between MCI and Northwest Iowa Power Cooperative and Northwest Iowa Telephone resells Internet access and long-distance phone service to rural co-ops in five Midwestern states and operates an ISP in Sioux City. All told, the partners' Pioneer Holdings joint venture has about 6,000 Internet customers, twice as many as a year ago, says Tony Mau , VP of Internet services. "When we go into small towns and establish Internet service for the first time, it helps us for when we talk to them about our other communication services like local and long-distance telephone," he says. "Quite honestly, that's where the better money is. It's almost a loss leader to get into the community." In light of the challenges they face - figuring out what services to offer, finding experienced partners, securing financing and wooing state regulators - it's likely that more utilities will scale back or abandon attempts to break into the telecom and Internet businesses. But the prospects of expanding customer bases and revenues should keep others in the game, says Rob Norcross , a Mercer Management Consulting executive who counsels utilities entering the phone business. Says Norcross: "For a utility that wants out of the utility business, there won't be opportunities much better than this one." Enter your address to find out what Starpower services are available in your home.