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Many Internet Users Happy With Dial-Up
prostoalex writes "With cable and DSL operators constantly pushing the values of broadband, and with the President of the United States himself announcing broadband access a priority, the New York Times reports (free reg. req.) that some people actually are perfectly satisfied with their 56K connection. In February 2003 Pew Internet conducted a survey, where they found out 60% of dial-up users weren't interested in switching, a year later in 2004 the percentage was roughly the same."
not everyone is interested in making first post.
Most people don't wish to pay for premium channels with their cable subscription.
This boggles my mind, I couldn't live without broadband.
:)
I'd be very interested to see how many of these people have ever experienced broadband, and if their attitudes would change if they had.
I realize that broadband can be overkill for many people, but even casual web-surfing can be painfully slow on dial-up.
Oh well, more bandwidth for me
There's nothing like the shear deluge of porn available to broadband users to turn one of sex entirely.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
...but have they actually had the chance of using broadband to compare it to dial-up?
Definitely the case of 'once you've tried it, you'll never go back...'
Out of those 60% how many have actually used high speed and know what a difference it makes?
I would guess a lot of users are happy with the 'portability' of a dial-up connection - ie. laptop in a hotel room. Broadband may be ubiquitous, but not as much as dial-in appears to be.
Ok, why is this a suprise to anyone? Many users do nothing more than look at a few pages and send/receive email. For them, that is the internet, that's all they want and care about. So, for those the people, there is no reason to pay the extra for broad band. When you can get dial-up for US$10/month a month, or less if you are willing to put up with ads, and basic broadband starts at US$30/month, is it really worth it to get your email a second or two faster?
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
As a sysadmin at a small to midsized web hosting firm, I find that dialup is all I need. I have tried time and time again to justify broadband at my house but as a single income household with 2 kids and my disabled wife, I can't afford it and do not really need it. If I need something that's broadband only (Latest distro ISO or something) I login to my server here at the NOC (45MB DS3) and download it there. Then I grab it on my laptop the next day at work. NO BIG DEAL. Even if I did not have 45mb/sec here at work I would still be OK with dialup. Heck most of us just check mail right?
Seriously though, the most I do is check mail, a few forums, and some web publishing. All low bandwidth stuff. So, I agree with the story. Broadband is nice but not necessary.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
I guess they're just not as smart as some of us.
In a related survey, 60% of dialup internet users were found to be smoking rocks.
--riney
So at any given time, 60% of dialup users do not want to switch. 40% do switch. Next year, 60& want to switch => some of the original 60% must have switched sides to the 40%.
In other news: dog bites man.
Let's consider the users who do nothing but e-mail with their Internet connection...
- Faster speed is not much of a benefit to them. They don't download images very often, and they're fine with walking away from their computer for however long it takes while those downloads happen.
- They don't particularly care about their phone callers getting busy signals, they don't get that many really important phone calls anyway.
- To them, changing e-mail addresses would be a nightmare. Some are even clinging onto address that they've had since 1994. The ISP may have gone defunct, but the old domain name is still being supported by the ISP that aquired them. Look at all the legacy domains Earthlink is still supporting.
- And, we're also talking about people who hate monthly bills. For retired people, they plan their budgets very carefully and even a $10/month difference bothers them.
Bottom line... not everybody wants an always-on Internet connection. Sure, everybody reading Slashdot who doesn't have one wants one... but there are a lot of people in the USA who wouldn't even know what Slashdot is.
A majority of people on Dial Up dont realize how slow it is because they have never had the chance to use broadband on a daily basis. I have known people that were "Completely Satisfied" with their dialup connections, only until they got broadband and couldn't imagine using the internet without it.
Text only pages, or ones with minimal images, are even much faster on broadband. They are still somewhat bearable with Dial Up, but anything with a decent image takes forever. Not to mention streaming legal videos, playing legal games, and downloading pr0....gressively more material.
60 percent are satisfied. That means 40 percent want to switch. If you estimate that half of that 40 percent will actually switch to broadband, then the number of modem users has shrunk by 20 percent.
So instead of saying "60 percent of modem users are happy", you could just as easily say "modem market shrinking by 20 percent per year". Most analysts would call that a dying industry.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics. It's all how you spin it. (i.e. no story here, move along.)
The percentage of dialup may have remained the same, but the number of total dialup users has decreased (I think), as more and more of the country gets wired with broadband. So while it may be 60% and 60% now, it's probably more like 100 million then and 75 million now. (Numbers completely pulled out of my ass, but you get my point.)
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
This is a common issue I've run into over and over again as a tech. Explaining to people how much better/easier their lives can be with new technology can be a battle. I've found that explaning new technology to a current user is liken to explaining what a pair of shoes can do for a person that has never warn them. Hard to understand because they can do all that they need to now without that pair of shoes. However, get them to wear a pair of shoes for a month or two and just see if they'll go back to being barefoot.
Same goes for dialup. If you switched those 60% dialup people to Broadband for a month or two then switched them back to dialup, I bet there wouldnt be more that 10% that are still satisfied.
In fact, take most new technology. I bet over 60% of tv watcher were happy with black and white and didn't think they needed color. Then once they watched their first show with a sexy co-star in color, black and white surely wouldn't be good enough!
scewed stats
A friend will come and bail you out of jail, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "damn that was fun!"
Some people will happily drink soda or juice through what is, in fact, a coffee stirrer. Much smaller than a straw, but it acts enough like a straw to make it useful, even though the transfer rate is considerably slower.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
The 60% number remaining unchanged for 2 years means nothing. How did the population of dialup users change? did it increase? decrease? or stay the same?
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
i remember in the good old days of the internet, we used 2 cans and some string
You had string?! We used to dream of string. We had to do wi' avian carriers, and be glad of it.
-- Alastair
Why enjoy $40 broadband when you can pay $30+/month for dialup goodness and an extra phone line. Mmmmm, dialup...
Obviously, prices vary by area, but that's what it is around here.
I also seem to notice that the friends without broadband seem to accomplish more and lead happier lives. Their lawns are not 8" tall all the time, the cars are always clean and they seem to keep a more tidy abode. Coincidence? Hmm...
Now where did I put that Slack ISO? Ahh, I'll just download it again. While I'm doing that, I might as well go check out Slashdot or Fark. My grass can wait 'til another day. Like I care what the neighbors think...
Thank God for broadband.
Ligaguinggligagiggagoogoogwillgo
Most of the /. crowd is going to cringe when they hear this, but I have a 28.8 internet connection. The way the phone switch is setup, it effectively cuts all modem connections from anywhere in town to 28.8 and eliminates any possibility of DSL.
Our cable company isn't going to upgrade it's infrastructure anytime soon to support cable modems either.
I've lived with it for years, and it's not all that bad. It's fine for e-mail and web browsing, and when I need a kernel update I just let it download overnight. Theoretically I could download just under 7GB a month, which actually beats some of your cable download caps! My only other option is satellite, but the hardware is Linux unfriendly and the latency is annoying (even more so than 28.8).
//Blessed are they that run around in circles, for they shall be known as wheels.
But you get so many more channels! And there's on-screen digital menus! And you can get a personal recorder! And! And! And!
Yeah, all true. All very nifty keen. I just have things that are more interesting to me to spend $360/year on (or, say, $10,800 over the next 30 years before I retire). However, I can't stand being without broadband.
I have relatives that just like to send e-mail. They compose off-line and batch-send. They use the web sometimes - mostly to shop - but often don't connect every day. Now they pay $15 a month or whatever for access and you could say that another $15 isn't much more...I'm sure when the difference gets down to zero they'll go broadband, but...
Advice: on VPS providers
If there were 200,000 people in 2003 and 120,000 didn't care, then in 100,000 people in 2004 and 60,000 didn't care, you still work out with the same percentage of 60%.
I'd be interested in seeing the raw numbers on this. In particular, I'd like to know the differential number on the "didn't cares" to see how many of those switched to broadband.
I'd like to see the study of users who to switch BACK to 56k after having broadband for a year or two. I bet by then it would be a necessity.
TK
Some people clung onto their old cell phone providers even after another provider started better or cheaper service in their area simply because they wanted to keep their numbers. Number portability was the solution to that problem.
Now, it'd be relatively simple to do this, just require that ISPs offer forwarding service for up to a year after a customer cancels, and the new ISP can kick back an e-mail telling anybody who's e-mails that the user has moved to them.
Of course, no ISP is going to offer this without the government ordering them to... but couldn't the FTC or FCC step in on this one?
Having been a DSL user for a few years now, I can't personally imagine going back to a slow dial-up connection. The same can't be said about people going the other way, though.
:)
For a great majority of users, having a computer is enough of an issue as it is. It's a mysterious machine to them, and plugging in extra cash without knowing the benefits isn't an option.
Even if they know and understand the speed benefits, it's often not enough to convince the low-end users to switch. So the pictures download noticeably faster...then what? Unless they're downloading pr0n or swapping major files, it's not that big a deal to them. Unfortunately, this is probably the same crowd that won't wait for Windows Updates to download because it's too much of a hassle.
If you want to put the Linux vs Microsoft parallel to this situation, there's an analogy waiting to be used. People who are used to dialup will not move to the unfamiliar unless absolutely convinced that it's better, faster, and more stable. There's a lot of Windows users out there who are afraid to jump operating systems simply because they'd rather stick to the familiar.
Same thing with dialup vs. broadband. Some people will willingly suffer through low speeds because they don't believe they need anything better.
Of course the analogy breaks the moment pricing is mentioned.
Those of you with older parents or grandparents will understand. Have you ever suggested an obvious improvement in any area to someone twice your age? Then you will understand. I'm sure a majority of these people are older folk whose kids or work forced a computer on them in the first place. Some people are just resistant to change of any kind, and those of us who are young now will likely be resisting the modernizing influence of our children in 30 years time.
My parents house is in a rural area, with bad phone lines. They are lucky to get 24Kbps connections, and the actual throughput on the line is below that. If they could really get 56K connections (40Kbps, or whatever realistic throughput would be) they would probably be happy with it.
As it is now, with their shitty dialup, they would definitely pay for DSL/Cable if it was available in their area.
Switching providers means more than just cutting dialup and getting a faster connection for $X more a month. There's also a few other issues at hand. The main one, of course, is the e-mail address. People *hate* to change their e-mail address. I'm one of them -- I pay for a proxy spam filtering service and deal with 3000+ spams a month to an e-mail address I've had for the last 8 years. It's a purely psychological attachment.
;-).
And, the price difference is more than you might expect. Not everyone out there uses $24/month AOL. $9.95 dial-up is available from mom-and-pop ISPs all over the country, and some of these are even beginning to offer compressing proxies (ala AOL's "Optimized") to improve web browsing over 56k links.
As for the AOL users, they are accustomed to the special features of AOL, and yes, their aol.com e-mail address. AOL Broadband is $15 a month, on top of your connectivity bill.
And above that, there's just the percieved "hassle" of switching. They're relatively happy with what they have, and don't want to deal with getting a new service, cancelling the old one, telling their friends their new e-mail addresses, etc. etc. etc.
I wonder if number portability requirements will ever extend to e-mail addresses
When I read the quotes from the article, I'm seeing people who are 46, 49, 61, 74, etc., so I'm wondering if the figures in this article are representative of all Internet users. Where were the quotes from 8 year olds?
These people will not be happy to miss the good content only available online, as there is already some kind of.
Thats because broadband is not enough broad and "everywhere" that companies who have to sell and distribute heavy content does not currently do it.
Thinking that a slow connection is enough is the same as not thinking about what next in 4 days, or maybe 6.
Humans should not refuse a faster and better way to communicate.
.. switch to broadband if they feel they don't need it? I wouldn't switch to a porsche if I'm happy with my Chevy for daily commuting unless I want a jazzy car with high performace.
So why would a user switch to broadband for just checking emails and browsing some websites if this can be done reasonably well using dial-up?
I thought I had this all figured out a while back. I always figured broadband was a lifestyle thing. Having been a gamer for god knows how long now, I've always done things like keep my computer on 24/7. To me, dialup was an inconvenience - it kept me from being online instantly, the same way that I could flick the mouse and be back at my desktop instantly. When I went to broadband it was obvious that that was the way to go: always-on, instant access. It became a lifestyle change thing. I even observed the behavior change with different girlfriens over time: they'd go from "let's look up the pizza place on the phone book/yellow pages" to "look it up online".
;) is just impossible to turn my back to.
I actually observed the exact same change with my parents: They used to keep the computer off, as there was no reason to keep it on. If they needed something online (like checking their e-mail or looking at a couple of webpages), they'd turn on the PC, wait for it to boot up, fire up the dialup, wait for the connection, download e-mail/check stuff on web, and disconnect as quickly as possible since a) people could be calling on the phone; and b) phone calls were metered by the minute over where they live (Spain). For them, using the computer was a big barrier: You had to go through a long, involved series of steps before even being able to do what you wanted. Looking up someone's information was easier using 411 (over there, 003) than using the PC for it.
Once I convinced them to do the DSL thing, the lifestyle changed completely - the computer remained on constantly, all you had to do to go online and check something was sit in front of it and type - it was always on . I know that's the point of it, but it's a huge mentality change. Seeing the transformation firsthand was amazing.
The curious thing, I find, is the number of people in the article and in the forums here that have experienced broadband, and do so on a daily basis, yet still manage to resist it. Self discipline, cost, just-don't-need-it come up as (to me, surprising) reasons why they say no to broadband.
To me, broadband vs. dialup is like cable/satellite vs. over-the-air reception, faxes vs. mail (back in the 80s), air travel vs. jumping on a boat to come to the US. It's just stuff that once you cross a certain frontier, a certain line, you can't just uncross it, you can't go back. The always-on availability of information, entertainment, and yes, even pr0n
Amazing stuff.
-Jack Ash
I started out on dial up way way way back when the only access was dial up BBS's...like The Ward Board and other BBS's in the Chicago area. Then moved to dial-up Internet usage through Interaccess...also in Chicago. Through Interaccess I then moved up to ISDN connection...then finally AT&T came to my area and I signed up with @home/ATT.
I went through the @home/ATT/Comcast shake-ups, but I ALWAYS loved my broadband. Even with Comcast I didn't have much downtime and the speeds were just great. I loved it.
But now, me and my family had to move to St. Joseph, Michigan and the only high-speed (where I am) is this fly-by-night ISP called "Green County Cable". I mean, they SUCK. They are down quite a bit, and their speeds are 400 kilo bits sec...down from the great 3Mega bits sec I was getting when I was last on Comcast (they upgraded from 1.5 to 3).
Add to the fact that I'm paying the exact same price I was paying for Comcast...and it SUCKS. But even after all that, no way would I ever ever ever go back to plain dial-up. It's just way too slow.
I have a feeling that if all those people that are satisfied with dial-up were given a taste of broadband, they'd never go back. I know from experience my mother-in-law. She's been on AOL for years, and had no intention of ever switching. But Comcast came through her neighborhood and offered to hook her up for free for 30 days...and she's never gone back to dial up.
It's like the drug pushers...the first hit is always free.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Cost of dial up service: 19.99 CND (varies but thats the average for unlimited us)
DSL: 36.99 CND.
Cable: 40.00 CND.
Everybody I know is on broadband. There isn't anyone I know who surfs the net regularly that isn't. Over here it's cheap, ussually reliable and unlimited use. Even dl/ul ratios ar elargly ignored. I did 25 gb last month and it cost me the same as when I do 5 gb. (I'm told if I ever do 50+ gb they might send me a letter to complain).
Fed up with your connection: move to canada.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
The main thing I like about DSL is the persistent connection. If I need an internet resource, I can grab it quickly...without having to wait for the modem.
The people I know who are staying with phone lines do so because they like getting all of their internet chores done is a single short session.
I think the overall download speed really is a secondary issue to how you organize your online time.
>how many have actually used high speed and know what a difference it makes?
I have a T3 connection at work. At home, my 56K is plenty. If I need to download and burn the latest Linux distro ISOs, download a 5GBI do not do a lot of gaming over the net, but if I did more, broadband would be a necessity. Also, if I lacked broadband access at work, I would definitely have it at home. Of course, that would mean choosing between the evil of DSL from SBC or the evil of cable from Cox. I wonder if there is service availavble from Cthulhu.net?
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I think it depends on what us dial-up users want. For me:
- I hate anything with FLASH
- I am not interested in movie clips from cnn.com or any other website for that matter
- I don't download music
- I don't online game
- I occationally download a pdf file from the DMV or other useful site, but when I do, I can wait for it
- I don't chat or IM
So yeah, SSH and e-mail (and the occational gander at slashdot.org) is about all that I use. Dial-up is fine.Some months ago my connection speed went from 1.5 DSL to 28.8 (previous local provider got bought out and my modem/router was incorrectly configured for the new provider, so I had to use a backup external dial-up).
It wasn't all that bad, actually. It required a bit of planning and no Daily Show video downloads, but it made me wonder why I was paying CAN$40/month for DSL while only getting double FAX speed.
For joe blow I honestly doubt broadband will make any difference. After all, their computer's will still be filled with 5 trillion pieces of malware, spyware, trojans using the computer as a bandwidth zombie and so on. For the sake of the Internet thank bloody god we have a few hundred thousand less broadband users.
I'm a webmaster and computer programmer. Like Danielle Kolko in the article you didn't bother to read, I have high speed access at work and dialup at home. I had broadband at home for a while, when the costs were lower, but then I chucked it. I have more time than money, and there is always plenty for me to do. When I'm going to download large files at home, I load up a bunch of articles first and read them while the file is transferred in the background. Or I go do something else and come back later.
I get told thousands of times a day that I need something RIGHT NOW and almost every time it's a bunch of crap. Every time I believed those lines I ended up feeling cheapened. When broadband is the only option, I will have broadband, or perhaps nothing.
I work 8-5. I sleep 10-6. I would therefore get 7 hours a day for most of the week out of a 24 hour connection -- at most I'd get 60 hours a week out of 168 that (A)DSL offers. Sure, there's plenty of stuff that I might be interested in downloading that could take advantage of the times I'm not there, but very little of it is legal. Anyway, most broadband deals in Australia turn crappy about 18 months after you get them and I don't want to have to hop from operator to operator every year and a half.
Captain obvious speaking: not everyone uses the internet for the same thing!
Some people need broadband. Most slashdotters are probably that kind of person. Back when I was on dial-up, playing games online was a nightmare. I'd have spurts of lag, disconnects, and a host of other problems that usually pissed me off, got me killed, or both. I also download large files, and on dial-up, that will tie up the phone line for a while. I'm pretty impatient when it comes to waiting for pages to load. All in all, I'm pretty much the perfect candidate for broadband.
On the other hand, there are people that just email each other and occasionally visit a website or two. Those people really don't need broadband. It's worth it to me to pay an extra 20 dollars a month for broadband, but it's probably not worth it to them.
Especially that evil one down here called Bell South. The same wonderful company that has recently tacked on an additional 3 dollars disguising it as a federal fee.
Phone companies, Bell South is by the worse, don't want to offer lower priced products. Not only do they want out taxes to pay to build their lines they want to charge us insane rates to use them. Everything about the phone company is extortion. Example, if I want Caller ID I have to pay about 8 dollars extra! Now, I can get caller id as part of a package of services for only 12.95 (or thereabouts).
What about their $30 a month DSL? Sure, 256 down! and only IF I subscribe to their expensive packages on my phone, like that $12.95 I mentioned earlier.
I truly believe the only reason the Cable companies can keep such high rates is because the phone companies do it.
I have given serious consideration to backing down to dial-up through a low cost provider. 30-40 dollars a month savings doesn't sound like much until you work it out across the year, then its 360 to 480. Thats many good dinners out with someone, some good computer hardware, or one motorcylce payment for me!
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Most people spell it Ferraris, not Ferraries.
You could have had every line in the parent post but you blew it.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Not only better things to do with our time, but also better things to do with our money. W'ere a one income family with 2 small children. I have broadband access at work, so I know what it's like.
We've got dialup at $12 on top of our standard phone bill.
DSL is cheaper than cable modem and the cheapest I could find DSL is $40/month.
Thats a savings of $28/month ($336/ year)
Sure, that's not a ton of money saved, but we also don't have cable tv or eat out much and have only one car. It all adds up, especially when you are working to be debt free.
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
Cable TV
Cell phones
Personal computers
All items that a certain percentage of the population sniffed at as unnecessary when they first hit the market. In fact there are probably more than a few Slashdot readers who don't have all four of the items listed above.
But the point is that all four are now ubiquitous. They're so inexpensive and widely distributed that pretty much anyone who wants to purchase can do so.
There are enough people demanding broadband in the U.S. that eventually it will become truly ubiquitous. There may be holdouts who use dial-up for many years to come, but the economic necessity of broadband access will ensure that it comes about either through private enterprise, government intervention, or a combination of the two.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
People "satisfied" with dial-up have no idea that other services are available over broadband that can actually SAVE them money.
By that, I mean VOIP.
Voice Over Internet Protocol is the next "big thing" when it comes to broadband.
My cable modem + Vonage VOIP service is cheap. No dial-up ISP and no copper phone line means i'm actually SAVING money each month.
It's only a matter of time (and bandwidth) until everything comes over your IP connection - TV, voice, and data.
-ted
On the front page, right now, next to this story is Ars' story entitled "Home broadband adoption up 60% in US" - This states some interesting facts: "There are now 48 million users with broadband at home, up 60% from last year's 30 million figure." - 20 mill. of those are DSL customers - also it states "DSL has climbed in popularity due in large part to price cuts which have brought prices down to the US$30 level for speeds of up to 1.5Mbps. When compared to spending US$20 for a dial-up connection or US$40-50 for high-speed cable, these budget DSL packages have proven to be attractive options.".
So the question remains, why aren't the dial-up users spending the extra US$ 10 to get always-on broadband DSL? I'm guessing many of the dial-up users can't get DSL in the first place. But that doesn't explain this article though.
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
It's been almost a year since I've gone back to dial up for financial reasons. When I was still in school and I lived with my father, he paid for broadband. I moved in with my girlfriend last summer and started working, my job was not that good and she is a student, so we went to 56k unlimited(only 15$CDN + tax). We each have a computer, and using both Windows and Linux, Windows XP dialup sharing did not cut it, so in came LineControl. Very practical, but people laugh at me when I tell them I have a 56k linux router, but are amazed at the same time. It works pretty well. At least we got unlimited internet, so when I download stuff, I use FTP when I can and queue up downloads with wget and batch files during the night. Some months it sums up to 350 or 400 hours of internet, but at least it is a flat rate. Somethings are a little longer, like my Slackware ISOs that took more than a week of night downloading. I have broadband at work (call center), but no burners, so not good for downloading. All in all, I wish I had broadband, but I don't and I live with it.
Most Slashdotters don't really give a shit. :-)
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
To have always on internet without blocking up your phone line? /shrugs
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
Actually:
Q: Are you interested in switching to broadband?
A: Well, I haven't really considered it before. I mean, the costs are high, but it seems to be the rage these days, so I'd really be in-NO CARRIER
The last time I used dilaup was in 1994, just before leaving for college. Since then, I've had megabit-level internet access continuously since. I've just moved out of Seattle to look for work in LA. I'm staying at my grandmother's (rather nice) place just south of LA where she connects via dialup.
First attempt was cable modem. The cable company wanted to wait three weeks before they could drop the modem off. In order to pick up the modem, the account holder needs to be present. Problem is, the account holder is my deceased grandfather (grandma doesn't want utility accounts in her name, as she is worried the spammers will know she is a widow and untold horrors will follow).
So, I called up a quality DSL provider and ordered the best service they could guarantee for the line -- 1.5m down / 256k up. The DSL gear arrived in a few days, and service followed a few days later. The modem synced at 384k down / 128k up. The ISP's bandwidth tester measured 200k down and 22k up. Even better, the connection is highly intermittant, much of the time a ping to the ISP-side router results in 65 % packet loss! Actual service is ocasionally 2-3x dialup speed, but mostly intermittant. Grandma can't understand why her emails take hours to send (because the mail server can't be contacted...).
I've arranged for the DSL people to contact the incumbant teleco and work on the line. This may happen in the next few days.
At the same time, I'm in touch with the cable modem ppl who claim they can get a modem and install dude out in two or three days. Would be nice if they can accomplish this, but I'm not hopeful.
As an experienced IT guy who has made fiber and DS3 cross connects, planned redundant router installations for small colos, and developed large portions of major software packages, I find this process very frustrating. For grandma, the difficulty is a thousand miles over her head.
Grandma is eager to get back to dialup (which I've done, until the teleco or the cable ppl can give us a decent connection). I'm back to alternating between Starbucks WiFi, and bluetooth+GPRS.
Even better -- Grandma's house is right on the beach in a rather high-rent neighborhood. The houses are huge, so the density of customers per square mile is low, and the distance to the CO is high.
2003:
10,000 people surveyed (note: I'm making up numbers to make a point)
4,000 currently on dialup
2,400 don't care to switch to broadband
2004:
10,000 people surveyed
1,000 currently on dialup
600 don't care to switch
"Last year, 60%, this year 60%" doesn't mean much without know whether a lot of the people who didn't care to switch a year ago have already switched.
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My parents wouldn't even use the internet if it wasn't always there. The hassle of dialing up was enough of a barrier to keep them from going online. I had a computer for years, my parents tried it once in a while but never really used it. Then after having DSL in my room for a few years I setup a computer upstairs for them. It was there for a good 6 months before they started to use it. But now they are on the net all the time. Checking the weather, watching my spending on my joint collage account, reserving plane tickets, etc... They don't use email much, mom gets enough at work and dad hasn't even got an account. They never would of gotten into it if they had to dial up.
Most people don't want broadband because they don't really use the net with their dialup, just email. They have used that web thing once in a while, but its just a toy or an addon to email for them.
If someone asked me how to get on the internet these days. Dial up would be the last thing I tell them.
It isn't a speed thing at all, its all about being always connected without tieing up the phone. Speed is only something us geeks really care about.
The internet just isn't the internet without broadband.
God, root, what is the difference?
Well, you might be able to get a second phone line for less.
For the longest time, I couldn't justify the extra expense of broadband. What pushed me over the edge was the realization that we needed the extra speed to download all the Windows patches. (To be fair, also the Linux patches.)
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Here in Australia, no matter which broadband ISP you go with, you need to pay our resident telco monopoly (Telstra) AUD$139 for the "privilege" of enabling broadband on that phone line. This make the economics of a free trial untenable unless you can convince a significant proportion of trial users to become full time broadband subscribers.
I'd love to see a few ISPs offer a free trial, but I fear that the ones who will are the biggest players, who offer the worst possible contracts compared to the real value ISPs. Not to mention that Telstra is able to defray the cost of enabling broadband 100% giving it an unfair competitive advantage (a subject for another post and the ACCC).
Another cost would be that of the modem itself.
Visceral Psyche Films
Didn't try very hard, did you? :)
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
If it was only 5$ more a month, maybe they would, but in Toronto, Ontario, it's more than $20.00 more per month for high-speed. There's tons of options for dial-up but only two for high-speed (cable and high-speed phone).
NetZero $9.95/month 56/56
Rogers Cable $44.95/month* 3000/384
Rogers Cable Lite $29.95/month* 128/64
*Without Rogers Cable TV package add an extra $10.00 for regular and $5.00 for lite.
Bell Sympatico High-Speed Ultra $54.95/month 4000/800
Bell Sympatico High-Speed $44.95/month 3000/800
Bell Sympatico DSL Basic $29.95/month 128/64 (2 GB transfers max)
Rogers even charges $24.99 for an ISA network card. >:[
I'm on dialup and I've downloaded 600+ mb files before... on P2P networks even, without the benefit of an uninterupted download. So obviously, 50-60 mb files aren't a big deal... again, it just means I have to remember to start the download before I go to bed or go out. And the phone lines running to my house suck... my connection is slow even for dialup, but I manage. It does mean you have to change the way you manage your downloads, and certain uses for the Internet are out of the question on dialup... but for some people, that just isn't a big deal.
And though it's true that a lot of people are ignorant about service packs and the like, and put their system security at risk, I'm not sure your typical broadband user is that much more savvy. By and large it's better for a person ignorant about PC security to be on and off with dialup rather than using an always-on shared network to access the Internet.
I had a really great ISP that had shell accounts on unix machines with all the usual GNU tools, so I'd write scripts to handle whatever tasks that required a constant connection. I had scripts that would even buy stuff without any user interaction. It's a good way to learn to test your code a lot before putting it into production.
So it's not at all suprising that people can do without broadband. If a heavy user like myself could get by just about anybody could.
Inndeed, itz aa seckurriti meashure, sinse sommone mite havve prottected tha corect speling oof ani wordt jou uuse aas theer inntelectual propperti.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
And telephone companies didn't? You lost me there. Even if that is the case, they certainly do pay for the continual maintenance of the telephone lines, so they have a right to them.
The fact the cable company paid to lay their lines should not give them absolute control. The rights to install the lines where they did, on public and private property, are granted by the local government, presumably in the interest of the public. If the local government doesn't like what the cable company is doing, they can kick them out, and replace them with another provider. Anyhow, the fact that the lines are installed gives the government the right to decide who gets to use which lines, and the FCC decided that the cable company gets to have a monopoly on internet access over their cable lines. Telecos weren't so lucky... I guess they didn't "donate" enough to the right politicans.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
But I now have 56K dial-up. I dropped cable TV and internet, because I was tired of paying to watch commercials, and really didn't use the bandwidth I had to the internet. Why pay $80 a month for TV and internet, when I can pay $10 for dial-up and use rabbit-ears (I get NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, and UPN just fine) for TV?
The major reason I dropped all of my cable service was because I couldn't get SCI-FI unless I subscribed to digital cable. That pissed me off.
Broadband is nice, but like other people have said, dial-up is just fine for surfing around. Yes, I do updates to all of my boxes at home. In fact, my home network runs through my Linux machine running a caching name server, iptables firewall, and ppp on demand. I have a lot of automated processes to keep all of my machines current with patches and security updates (Windows and Linux), and they work just the same over dial-up as they did over broadband.
As far as waiting to connect, it only takes about 20 seconds or so for my modem to dial and connect. Big deal.
It seems everybody misses the point. For several years I had 64kbit broadband. Why would I call something only marginally faster than 56K "broadband"? Because of entirely different mode of access - the "always-on" connection. It changes the way you think about Internet, it is no longer something you do once a day to read e-mail and chat on AIM - it is now something you do when you need something from Internet. You no longer need to connect to the Net, you are connected all the time. This is also useful for family access, when there is more than one Internet user.
Right now I have 256kbit connection which is also much cheaper (60$/mon and unlimited traffic, unlike the old one). I like the ability to play UT2004, use P2P and download videos, demos, flash, etc., but this isn't the best part of broadband. The best part is being able to instantly look up everything you need on a miriad of sites as much in-depth as you need.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.