NEW YORK — Although anything wireless is all the rage in technology these days, the industry's fastest-growing companies operate in more grounded realms, according to new report.

Deloitte & Touche's ninth annual Fast 500 examined revenue growth at high-tech companies over the previous five years.

By that measure, TheraSense Inc., an Alameda, Calif.-based maker of glucose-monitoring systems for diabetics, ranked first after seeing revenue soar from $60,000 in 1998 to $178 million in 2002.

Second-fastest was privately held Paetec Communications Inc. of Fairport, N.Y., which provides voice and data services to businesses. Tampa, Fla.-based Z-Tel Technologies Inc., a seller of telecommunications services, placed third.

No. 4 was Fairfax, Va.-based software maker webMethods Inc., followed by Advertising.com Inc. of Baltimore.

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Software companies dominated the list, with 39 percent of the Fast 500. Among them: No. 404 Veritas Software Corp., which is the only company that has appeared in every one of Deloitte's Fast 500 reports since they debuted in 1995.

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