Dump Broadband, Dig Out Your Modem!

wilstephens writes: "Found this article on CNet about the latest trend of people dumping broadband in favour of their modems. Cheaper, and more reliable service, apparently! 'Katy Ling, a software consultant who had her home wired for high-speed Internet access last year, did what many technology analysts said would never happen: She bailed out of broadband...'"

Comments

Re:This article is crap

[elefantstn]

And the value in 'broadband' is not the speed really. We've heard many times now, it's the instant availability stupid. People hate to have to wait (through busy signals potentially) to get online witha modem to check their mail. They like to have ICQ/AIM running all the time to see when their friends are online and to chat. It's all about convinience.

Exactly. Most people who use broadband use it for the always-on connectivity, the never-tied-up phone line (very important), and the easy ability to share a connection (especially with the ease of setting up a linksys cable router appliance) way before they use it for the sort of blazing-speed streaming video it was hyped for. (As an aside, most broadband commercials I see still hype the speed, when the convenience is really the most attractive feature. Poor marketing in my opinion.)

The always-on argument also invalidates the cost argument for dialup. To even have half the uptime people associate with broadband, you can spend $30-$35/month easily (large number of hours, extra phone line), which is only about a $10 difference from broadband.

I help out a lot of the people at the company I work for set up computers/networking/etc at their homes, and almost everyone is moving towards broadband. There are only two reasons people don't switch - 1) They want to keep AOL or 2) They don't know about broadband. Nobody I've talked to has ever considered broadband and decided not to because of cost.