I live in an ex-urban neighborhood north of St Paul MN. I used to have
cable at my previous address, the best we could get here was
satellite. It's not too bad, but much slower than cable. Not sure I
can justify it, but I am looking into T1 lines. I hear "big company"
prices between $700-1000/mo and some "startups" (?) offering partial
T1's (what's partial?) for about half of that. What are partials?
Would they be a solution for a "high tech" exurb family with two home
businesses? [note: DSL is not available here either, I checked. Still
over six miles away, but this is farmland and it might never get
here.]

Hey charidea, heard you thinking over T1, well I've done some
researchers and found some locations for St Paul, Minnesota. I used to
have T1 so I will give you Pro and Cons for T1, but really, a T1 for
two people is kinda risky.
Here is a cheap one!
http://shopfort1.com/mn/st-paul.cfm - Data T1 1.5 MBPS	$398.00
Pros:
-High Upload
-Hardly any maitence time
Cons:
-Very few companys that support in some un-socialized communties
-Very pricy

I would like to know what you are going to use T1 for though. Although
it is a farm land you can find some DSLs but obviously not that famous
ones.
Check out this site:

http://www.broadbandlocators.com/business-dsl/Minnesota/St-Paul.php
~Kool Aid
Aiding you the Kool way!

This may not necessarily fit your needs, but you should look into fixed wireless.  

http://www.bbwexchange.com/wisps/minnesota-wisps.asp
http://www.stonebridgewireless.com/

Yeah those are good resources.  The original and, from what I hear,
the largest web based marketplace for getting T1s is
http://www.colotraq.com.  This is their T1 site: 
http://www.colotraq.com/T1_Internet.htm

good luck