FairPoint Communications, the little company that said it could run Verizon's landline business in northern New England, is struggling. Complaints about service and billing pour in like arrows during a medieval siege. Earlier this month, some 13,000 FairPoint customers in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont with service orders were still on hold - some for a month or more.

As politicians are wont to say when things go wrong, mistakes were made. Mistakes by the consultants who said FairPoint was ready to take over, mistakes by the company that developed its computer systems, mistakes by FairPoint management, and perhaps too, mistakes by the regulators in three states who gave FairPoint the go-ahead.

But the reality is, FairPoint is the only game in town. No one else in the wireless age wanted to take over landlines serving a largely rural population. And despite its flaws, FairPoint is trying. Most of its internet-related problems have been solved, the company has added a big contingent of people to decrease the backlog of orders for service changes, and it's hiring two more consulting companies to help it improve service.

Success for FairPoint is predicated on giving its customers not just better service than they were getting from Verizon, but services that Verizon wasn't providing. That means offering customers an affordable package of telephone, television and broadband services before those customers find alternatives. That's proving to be a big challenge, and FairPoint's plan to offer internet service via high-speed DSL telephone lines may never satisfy customers who have access to cable service.

On Thursday, the Public Utilities Commission ordered FairPoint to submit, among other information, a detailed management chart showing who was responsible for accomplishing what and to outline the steps the company is taking to "return to acceptable levels of service."

In the long run, except in the hinterlands, acceptable won't be good enough for long. Thousands of FairPoint customers who had other options have dropped their landlines or switched to companies that can provide the big three services via broadband. Many did so after casting a parting shot FairPoint's way, which is understandable. But until even better technology becomes available at an affordable price, the millions of miles of copper wire overhead and underground that have connected far-flung people since the dawn of the telegraph will be needed. Telephone service, for most, is a necessity. So the big question is not whether FairPoint can provide acceptable service by June. It's how to serve the people who live in areas too remote to make it profitable to put up a cell phone tower or run high-speed cable.

If FairPoint can't make a go of it, someone will still have to make sure Aunt Minnie out in the sticks can call someone when she's sick. Rural telephone service has always been subsidized by urban residents who pay more than it costs to serve them because otherwise, rural residents wouldn't have phones and urbanites couldn't call them. Someday a few cents on cell phone bills might do the same thing.

FairPoint's problems are frustrating customers and regulators alike. But they are problems caused by a world whose technology is changing rapidly and for the better. And if FairPoint doesn't solve them, who will?