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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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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?
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
.. 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 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.
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.
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."