Ted Lewinski realized he was not going to be a rock star. So he put down the guitar; agreed to cut his long, blond hair; and set off doing something that was supposed to be just as sexy. He started an Internet company.

"Almost Famous, that's my life," the former lead guitarist for '90s local band Empty Stares said in a reference to a recent movie title.

These days, Lewinski, 27, is chief executive officer of MilleniaNet Corp., a small Internet service provider and Web host that he cofounded three years ago in Newtown Square, Delaware County.

The Northeast Philadelphia native and graduate of Cardinal Dougherty High had never dreamed of starting a business until an investor and mentor 50 years his senior offered him the challenge.

And a challenge it has been. The Internet proved almost as tough to succeed in as the music industry because the economy began its slide not long after the 1999 launch of MilleniaNet. Untold numbers of Internet-related companies have folded or been gobbled up by competitors.

MilleniaNet provides Internet connections for residential and business customers, and helps businesses set up and maintain Web sites.

But Lewinski has brought his firm to what he considers the verge of its own big break.

The company, with 1,000 business customers and 2,000 residential users, has no debt, has been profitable for a year, and expects 2002 revenue of $1.5 million, Lewinski said. On Jan. 1, MilleniaNet plans to become one of about 240 companies certified by the state to offer telephone service in Pennsylvania.

The move gives MilleniaNet a source of potential revenue beyond Internet connections and Web site hosting, and an edge over competitors still unable to "bundle" voice and data services to business clients, Lewinski said.

MilleniaNet resulted from discussions between Lewinski and Gus Zarelli, 76, a West Chester developer and landlord, who said he had been looking for new business opportunities for his children. In the end, Zarelli brought the cash, Lewinski the expertise.

Lewinski had earned an associate degree in network engineering from the Computer Learning Center of Philadelphia. "If I didn't make it as a rock star, I was going into computers," he had told himself.

In 1996, while he was still with Empty Stares, he had taken a network engineering job at Voicenet Communications Inc., of Ivyland, one of the oldest and largest Internet service providers in the region.

Starting a business was "scary," Lewinski said. When he was writing the original business plan, "I didn't even tell my best friend, in case nothing ever happened," he said.

Funding for the company - an initial $900,000 for equipment, payroll, advertising and the like - was put up by Zarelli, who also took the title of president of MilleniaNet. His daughter Jeanette Farley is vice president and one of several family members active in operating the 10-person company with Lewinski. Farley oversees sales and accounting.

Zarelli said he met Lewinski when the younger man was working at Voicenet. "Once he started talking to me about the business, I got interested," Zarelli said. "I've been a builder all my life. I wanted to do something different." The guitarist and the capitalist clicked. Lewinski had a mentor in Zarelli. Zarelli said he was impressed with Lewinski's know-how.

But there was one little problem. "I made him cut his hair," Zarelli said. "I thought it would be better for business if he cut his hair and straightened himself out, because he looked like a hippie."

From 1992 to 1997, Lewinski and Empty Stares toured the country, living out of a van, showering at truck stops, and playing as an opening act for heavy metal headliners Anthrax, GWAR, Type O Negative, Life of Agony, the Misfits, and Clutch.

"It seems like it was a long time ago," said Lewinski, whose blond hair now measures about an inch in length. During a tour of the MilleniaNet offices, he wore a black suit while pointing out racks of equipment, servers, fiber-optic cables that shuttle data for the Chester Water Authority, and a bank of computers that host online exams for the Educational Testing Service, of Princeton, N.J.

"We were all, like, graduating school, going into careers; it broke us up," he said of the band. While the drummer went off to California, the bass player became a teacher, the rhythm guitarist opened an electrical engineering company in New Jersey, and the lead singer became a computer network consultant, Lewinski said.

"I couldn't run the business, and keep [a musician's] schedule, and have a life with my girlfriend," he said.

Nevertheless, in recent months, Lewinski entered contests to try out for the bands Creed and Limp Bizkit. He got to play on a local radio station, but has only a lousy T-shirt to show for his efforts.

He got a band together briefly to play for cameras filming an episode of Dating Story, a cable-TV program that recently featured Lewinski going out on a blind date. An acquaintance had suggested him to the show's producers as a last-minute replacement. "I honestly never heard of Dating Story," he said. "I thought it was bogus, but I thought, 'OK, I'll go along.' "

For the show, he even agreed to be filmed getting his latest tatoo - a St. Brigid's Cross - on his left bicep.

He said the antics are part of his effort to win back a personal life after three years hunkered down with MilleniaNet.

"When I started the business, I lost touch with everything. It was in the last year, I got back into karate, playing guitar, having a girlfriend. You know, I wanted to have a life," he said.

Three years ago, Lewinski envisioned that the company would be taking in $10 million per year by now, and that it would have gone public.

"It was a whole different situation," he said. "We just got on the very end of that bubble, before it burst." Now, he said, "we don't want to go public. We'll stay private and grow slowly."