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We Don't Need No Stinkin' Broadband
Ant writes "eMarketer has an article on The Yankee Group's analysis on why some Americans aren't feeling the broadband love. It was based on Ipsos Public Affairs. 45% of Americans say it's simply too expensive. 30% say that they just don't want it. 14% say they feel dial-up is adequate for their needs. Less than 10% are not able to get broadband access in their area. Five percent insist broadband is "too complicated". Another 5% aren't even sure why they don't have it..."
29% of broadband users needed to refresh Slashdot more rapidly so that they could obtain a first post.
I do agree with those who stick with dialup. I don't download movies, songs, anything like that. I just use it to hunt for jobs, check out houses, etc.
I would rather use the broadband connection at work for the bigger items that I download.
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.
TCP seems to be querying things that haven't even happened yet!
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I mean, if all you do is dial up for 5 minutes each day to download your email, I guess a 5 buck a month service suffices. But I imagine that in 15 years, such a meager usage would be almost unimaginable.
You have to have a reason to require broadband. Websites load slowly with dialup, so that's not a convincing argument. Things like video blogs that use online recording through the browser don't work with dialup - while many people won't care about this, a new mom trying to send video of her kids to family members only to see choppy images with no audio may be convinced by such an argument. Some people won't have a killer app, won't upgrade, and - even though I make a living off of high speed networking - I can't say I blame them. Some people just don't need the newest technologies, and likely never will.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
30% say that they just don't want it.
Old people...
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Hmm... 104% Interesting.....
"I know this... this is a unix system" -- Jurrasic Park
SBC DSL
I guess not everyone has expendable budgets. But isn't Dial Up close to that price?
-- Brought to you by Carl's JR
is that once you try it, you can not go back to dialup.
If you haven't had broadband yet and only dialup, upgrading doesn't seem necessary. But once you've experienced the speed of broadband and the convenience of not having to dial up and log in, you'll never want to go back.
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
I'm still on dial-up, as I have been for the last 8 years (at this address.) I see offers come and go, but they still boil down to an eventual rate of about $50/mo. I only need that speed now and then and it's hard to justify.
It's about the same with me as it has been with cell phones. I've had those 3 different times and always cancelled because I was shelling $35+/month and using the phone for less than 10 minutes a month. Only when seeking a new job or apartment do they seem genuinely necessary. I've got a pay-as-you-go plan now and I used about 20 minutes a month for each of December and January, so this is much more to my liking of ~$10/month. For service.
I'd like high speed for downloading Microsoft's bloated patches (why are these things always 15 MB? for a "few" fixes?) or the latest virus scan patterns (again, why are these things 5-10 MB?) Seems there's always a hell of a lot more than seems necessary, but I suppose developers of today didn't grow up trying to maximize 8K and could care less how much shit is in things as it's not their problem. For the most part, I get by and that's all I need.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's all a matter of priorities. I'll bet that of those people not willing to pay $25 or $30 for entry-level broadband, a good portion of them spend $50, $60, or more on cable or satellite TV.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
14.4k was for the rich, and we were lucky enough to even own a computer! Harrumph, these techie-wizbang whipper snappers...downloading everything in sight, always wanting things FASTER and FASTER!. Harrumph I say.
I'm from semi-rural Alaska (though I go to college in New England), and in my neck of the woods, it's usually cheaper to get broadband access. There are a couple of phone companies who service the area, and if you catch one of them at the right time with the right promotion, you can get DSL + new phone service, or cable + cable modem, at the same price as dial up, or maybe slightly more. My family did this, if only so that we could be online at any time without tying up the phone lines. That's what was the most painful about dial up, not being able to use the phone at the same time. Long download times are a pain, but can be delt with; missed phone calls cannot.
We recently got DSL access to my house, and as soon as the option was there took it, since they were only letting a few households from the area on at the time. However, now that I'm out of the house, I think the only good thing about my family having DSL is the phone issue: otherwise, we have a lot of bandwidth going unused. But at least when my dad "screws up the internet," I can call and walk him through getting it working without having to hang up every time he wants to check to make sure it works.
Why, broadband will be a thing of the past when wireless neuro-implants are in place! Why go to a clunky machine when you could can simply download everything to your head?
I pay 50 + dollars for cable each month. But I dont switch to dsl, why?......meh...cant someone else do it?
No options except satelite and thats a big nope and I'm not going to move just to get broadband. I live in the country because I can and because I like it.
Gone!
Sites that work just fine at 56K:
The primary use of broadband is to deliver ads. At the consumer's expense. No wonder 30% of users don't want it.
I do computer repair for a bunch of people that live around me, several of them are older people and the majority of these older couples use dial-up access. In my experience, dial-up isn't the same as it was way back in the day before broadband, the speeds are 'actually' at 56k, and sometimes the provider can actually make these speeds faster with accelleration utilites. As a matter of fact the only point in time that any of my clients had complained that their speeds were too slow was when I advised them to get windows updates. Normal web browsing, email and the like are served extremely well by dial-up today, in my opinion.
The reason for the lackluster demand is that animated gifs make perfectly good porn. Most porn is just back and forth movements of the same kind over and over. Animated gifs can repeat the same 10 frames over and over for the same effect. What is needed is to transform people into a species that has more varied sexual movements, such as figure 8's that morph into W's, etc. Butterflies have the right idea; they do it in the air in a frenzied dizzy kind of sky dance (although JavaScript may be able to mimic this without lots of frames). As usual, the real problem is the damned humans. Until the marketing department figures this out, they will continue to drive Honda Civics.
Table-ized A.I.
Having switched over several times for broadband in my life time, I feel like I'm getting the reach-around... You know, the warm and fuzzy feeling when your 1 year contract expires and having your ass jammed up with bills and fraustration.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
Cowboy... GET SOME SLEEP
Secondly, WHY am I reading this so late?
Last but not least
A POINT
.
Personally I think cable is way too expensive. At least it is with Comcast. I pay about $45 a mo. and I only need the $20 service. I really wish there were some more TIERS to broadband. My main issue w/ DSL is that I have to have a phone line 1st. To switch to dsl, I would have to pay a phone line charge on top of the service fees, wich brings me up to the price of cable. so I lose either way. Maybe I can share with my neighbors and bring my price down a bit
Have a good night all
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
In Canada I get broadband and +70 TV channels for 80 looney Canadian dollars a month. Posters from other countries like Korea, Japan and some European countries have posted in the past about how, relative to U.S. rates, broadband cable is cheap in their respective countries.
So what's up south of the border?
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Price was an issue until just recently. SBC/ATT dropped to $13, and Verizon dropped to $15/mo. That's less than large ISPs (Earthlink, MSN, AOL) are charging for dial-up, and only slightly more than most others (Netzero, Juno, etc) with crappy dial-up service and software.
The only excuse now is if you travel a lot, and need access all across the country.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
those must be the confused teenager!
and as regards to the high prices of net via cable, me and my friends play an evil game.. we live in 3 apartments and keep utilizing the Comcast promotional offer of $19.99/month for a semester, then change the address.. and then when the cycle repeats, we change the name of the person in that apartment.. the low price comes with little slow speed (sharing), still a good internet experience for the price we pay.. and we still can watch streaming videos.. so no complaints
[links to a DSL offer that's $30/mo after the promotional period] But isn't Dial Up close to that price?
NetZero or Netscape dial-up will run $10/mo to $15/mo. In addition, if you live in a rural or semirural area, you may have to move to an urban area in order to get DSL, and that means paying often inflated prices for urban real estate.
Repeat, 2 years in the making.
Also: I don't know what all the bitching is about (from the old story): Even President Bush jumped into the fray last month, calling for affordable, universal high-speed access by 2007.
I mean he *CALLED* for it people, and it's just one year away.
TK
A friend of mine moved house to regional New South Wales (one of the States of Australia) about four years ago. I remember him telling me that one of the harder things was the internet connection there. They only had dial-up, and he told me that he was averaging about 200 bytes/second...
Just downloading text-based email was taking a long time...
but my broadband connection is quite cheap (albeit relatively slow). For AU$24/month (about US$18) I get 2gb up/down at 256/64 kbit/s... not speedy - but enough for everything I want to do...
Given how much faster broadband is in other countries. Why can't we have 100MB/second? My town would gladly pay extra...in fact it even tried to do so...to begin adding foberoptics. Comcast would simply not allow it.
Semantic Paranoia
As someone who works for an ISP that offers both dialup and broadband services---
H A!:FW:RE:FW:" emails during their time at the computer.
98% of people who want or have broadband don't need it. They check their email twice a week and/or look at weather or news sites once in awhile.
75% of people who *have* broadband assume everyone else does and sends email with attached 150mb video files of their kids' snowball fight, with 200 accumulated addresses in the CC field. They also average to circulate about 130 "FW:FW:FW:RE:FW:FW:FUNNY!:FW:FW:FW:RE:FW:FW:RE:HA
100% of people who demand broadband don't want to pay for it. Either they forget or they never knew the days of $50/month or pay-per-minute dialup (at 14.4Kbps or less!). $40/month is the best we can offer. If we could offer it for less, we would, but all too often our customers get wined and dined by some $29/month special by the local cablemodem provider and jump ship. I point out in their offer that this rate is only going to last for 6 months, but they usually respond with "If they raise the rates, I'll just cancel and go somewhere else."
Fuckwits. I give up. I'm going to quit IT and open a restaurant.
do() || do_not();
Go ahead - try to send video of your newborn baby to your relatives across the country using 56k.
First step is using 56k to go to usps.com to look up shipping rates. Second step is using 56k to go to froogle.google.com to look up prices for DVD-R or DVD+R media. If it's that important, and getting broadband to your home would involve a $100,000 setup fee to move from the country to the city because of the real estate price difference, then mailing DVDs is cheaper than getting broadband to your home. If it works for AOL...
and non-internet options start getting really, really expensive.
What "non-internet options" are you talking about? And "really, really expensive" compared to what?
Ppl frm th Mddl Est invntd alphbtc wrtng, bt th invntd lttrs fr cnsnnts lng bfr th invntd lttrs fr vwls. Hbrw and Arbc stll dn't us a lt of vwls.
(People from the Middle East invented alphabetic writing, but they invented letters for consonants long before they invented letters for vowels. Hebrew and Arabic still don't use a lot of vowels.)
Here in Mexico, Internet access is not nearly as spread as in developed countries, but I see the current trend is that existing companies are bundling access with their main services, for instance Telmex (Mexico's main phone company) is pushing very hard to sell their phone lines with a 512kbps link. And prices are not that high. Another example is cable companies that are also offering discount when buying the video and data services together. Is there a Moore Law equivalent on bandwidth?
Google as many items as you want and its simple user interface will return an incredible amount of results and let you switch through them as fast as you want to, even on 56k, but the point is google only points you in the direction of the information you seek. If you truly wish to get your information you will have to delve into servers that are not as fast or as populace as google servers.
... it IS too expensive. Broadband is overpriced, when priced normally, in most areas. And before anyone says that it's the fair market value--I think the proof is in the pudding: the fact that so many Americans don't buy into it means the price could do with a little dropping (or maybe a little more competition?)
I try to ride the sign-up specials between DSL and Cable, but I don't blame most people for not wanting to put up with that.
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
Ok, the average cost of a broadband connection is $50, give or take. How much is dialup (it's been about 7 years since I last had it)? I've seen bargain-basement no-name ISP's go as low as $5, but most "decent" dialups were $15+ a month.
Now, you're using a phone line, so any time you're online, you block up your phone, unable to make or receive any calls (and if someone tries to call out, they get an earfull of hiss and disconnect you). Solution? Get a second phone line, at a cost (at my phone co.) of around $20 a month per line. That brings your internet costs up to around $35.
Now, that's $15 less than a broadband connection, but for dialup speeds, having to dial-up and log on (which are succeptable to busy signals and the like). Buy one less coffee a day and you'll save up enough to make the difference. As others have said, once you go broadband, you'll wonder how you'd ever survive on dialup.
3 years, and Zombo still hasn't finished loading.
I need broadband because I'm used to it and I don't want to waste my time with dialup. For many, who don't use the internet for their jobs and don't see how the cost can be offset by the supposed benefits, it's hard to justify spending another $20 or more for broadband. Maybe we just need to get everyone an "earn a fortune with your ebay business" package they'll subscribe in due course.
Who needs highspeed anyway, just open the window and shout louder. At my house we have the tried and true can-and-string network, it seems fast enough for most uses. When real speed is needed, just send a carrier pigeon.
It's still not fast enough for quality video and too expensive.
,overpriced.
Blame BIG business and their conspiracy to kill munibroadband. Yes, real conspiracies do exist . FTTH should be everywhere but it's not because the cable and phone companies are cherry picking and they want to keep prices HIGH. No good to shareholders selling inexpensive broadband to poor areas. Might anger the people on the other side of town.
As long as Bush and republicans are wine and dined by these people it wont matter. There is no REAL competition. It's just like Cable Tv
I find it interesting that %5 find it more complicated. Connect cable/phone, power, computer, make a short phone call, and ding, your computer is full of internets.
I really, it comes down to a lack of knowledge and money. I think even all the other reasons would be moot except unavailable if the price were comparable. Nobody wants slower, or to tie up their phone line, so really I think properly educated, the vast majority just don't find it worth the money.
People always complain about how expensive broadband is in Australia but it sound better than you guys have it in the states. I pay $50 AUS (~ $36 US) for a 20mbit down 1mbit up connection with 20 gig download a month. You can get connections as cheap as $9.90 (~ $7.3 US) for 256k down 64k up with 70 meg download a month. That is cheaper than dialup plus you don't have to pay for a local call to ring your provider. I could never go back to dialup, oh the pain when I exceed my limit and have to deal with the 72k cap, and thats about 1 and a half time dialup.
more bandwith for me! haha
In another poll, 45% of people didn't want electricity as it was much more expensive than gaslamp light. 30% didn't want it as it was impossible to get the match past that glass shell to light the mantle. 14% found oil-lit torches all that they needed. 10% said they couldn't get it in their area. Five percent insisted that it was "too complicated, what with all those switches and plug things, and it's not as safe as gas, as you can't smell it when it leaks out." The remaining people interviewed declared it, "The work of Satan, and unnatural."
The normals don't want "broadband". Just like they don't want "cable". They want sports shows, movies, cooking shows, 24 hour news rotations. Cable is just a means to an end. They didn't want "the Internet", either, or even "the Web" - just email, porn, or whatever their personal favorite websites happen to be. When broadband is a necessary means to some end, some killer app, they'll want broadband.
Markets are driven by consumer demand, not by producer supply.
--
make install -not war
I still use dialup and have watched as many web sites have become completely unusable, due to 500k flash files needed just to navigate around. Furthermore, web site designers seem to have completely forgotten about dialup users -- Yahoo mail for example refocuses the cursor on the username login box AFTER it loads tons of stuff. The end result is that if you use dialup that might be 30 seconds after the page started loading... viola, you are typing elsewhere and the focus is suddenly stolen from you and you find yourself unexpectedly typing in the login textbox...
Or better, don't use ANY graphics. Just surf without graphic if you just need non-pictorial information.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
45% of Americans say it's simply too expensive.
No. 45% of Americans who responded to the survey finding out why they didn't have broadband say that it's too expensive. In other words, it's ignoring the 61% (according to the article) who already have broadband.
The way it's written in the summary is like saying that 70% of people don't drive because they don't have a licence, even though clearly more than 30% of people *do* have a licence. (Okay, those numbers were completely made up - I hope you see my point though.)
Jon
I know it's hard for the /. crowd to understand because network is typicaly more simple to jack into than dialup. It's this whole PPPoE thing sold by the likes of Earthlink and other ISPs or worse yet AOL Broadband that gives the impression of something rather complex that makes broadband so much so less attractive, esp AOL with slow DNS servers that make the net look like "the slug.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
... Dial up with ads is faster than low-end broadband without ads? bull frickin crap.
Ads = a few kbps jpeg/gif image. Most webpages have purposeful images, which more than likely are larger, higher quality jpegs, pngs, etc. So where is the "ads slow you down horribly" BS coming from? ONLY if you are on 56k dialup could you even notice a difference at all.
I get my ads in a split second, baby!
Verizon DSL - paying 25-30$/month for 3Mbps/768kbps
Broadband ads can be blocked. EASILY.
Broadband is for downloading pretty much anything that reaches a 1MB size or higher. Dialup sucks. Why bind myself to just sending email (no attachments, mind you), a few IMs (with no voice or video), and some simple surfing (yes google is fast on dialup, but any page you are trying to FIND WITH GOOGLE WILL NOT BE (duh!).)
How can anyone even live on dialup? You say 56k like its a good thing. 56kbps?!?!? Thats like...... 7KB/sec. Ah. What a refreshing speed for streaming video and downloading a couple of PDFs... haha.
I remember when microwaves first came out. My mother's friend said they were great. When asked what she did with it the friend said that she heated up coffee, cooked hot dogs, warmed up some food. My mother couldn't see how that would be useful for her. She doesn't drink coffe and the stove is just fine for the other two. Of course a couple years later after finally getting a microwave it has become an essential part of her kitchen. Same story some years before - my parents used an IBM selectype and didn't see the point in having a word processor. Later the typewritter broke and they did buy a word processor, but couldn't see any use for them buying a computer. Now they have two in their house.
My brother and his family have been living in Jamaica for the past 4 years and using dial-up the whole time until a month ago. I tried to tell him about the benefits of broadband but he just wasn't interested. (Mind you him and his wife don't believe in having a tv either!).
A few months back he wrote to ask me for help with computer problems saying that he kept getting disconnected or it wouldn't even connect. It has been far too many years since I have dealt with modems and didn't even know what to suggest. I thought it sounded like poor quality phone lines. He finally decided to switch to broadband, but hasn't used it enough to really 'get it'. Maybe after a bit of time he will see such benefits as:
- using messenger to chat to our parents (in Canada) or brothers (USA, Japan, Canada)
- using skype et.al. for voice or even video chat, especially between the grandparents and kids
- being able to download his own updates for programs instead of me having to burn them to CD and MAIL them because it 'takes too long' by dial up and the connection would fail anyway.
- be able to send friends photos larger than a postage stamp (and vice versa - they requested that all contacts only send them up to three pictures under 100kb each)
- the kids can browse wikipedia etc. for school project research without having to wait all night just for pages to load
- next time he has a problem I can connect via remote access (vnc) and fix it from here
- listen to live CBC radio streams, or automatically download such radio shows as podcasts
I think it is the same as computers back when typewriters were used... or microwaves when first sold. Until they were ubiqutous, a lot of people honestly didn't see how the technology would fit into their life.
Perhaps it's different here in the south, but most people I meet have no desire whatsoever to dip their toes into the pool of mankind's knowledge - internet, library or otherwise. Just give people broadcast TV and a bar to drink at, and their mental faculties are either satisfied or squashed by their job.
And broadband aside, most people I know here don't even have dial-up. Those that do have it are almost all on cable, which I guess is unusual for the USA apparently.
I suppose that being an information junkie makes it hard to fathom a life without constantly absorbing something new. That's why I keep coming back to slashdot after all. The more I think about going internet-free for a while, the more I realise I'd be bored witless, and supplant the internet with an inferior replacement like the library, newspapers or whatever else is at hand.
Don't Hate, Gestate
SBC costs $15, just as much as dialup. In other words America is full of morons.
The savings to companies and organizations that come from putting information on their web sites are huge. Printing costs a ton, even today. People at desks to talk to the public cost more. Actually keeping less-sold items in stock across the continent instead of just shipping them when wanted is incredibly expensive.
More and more companies will reach the point where it's almost impossible to get your business done without using the internet. How long will companies accept resumes on paper? How long will banking without the internet be reasonable? When will doing your taxes without it become impractical?
Even beyond that, in fifteen years most of our traditional communication systems will be on the net. Telephones and television will be run over the net whether you know it or not.
The net isn't a single medium like TV. It's more like electricity. I don't have a television, but I can't see how I'd run my life without a net connection. I'd have to go so many places to pick up pamphlets and forms, sit on hold for hours so much more often, order unusual items I'd like to buy at the store and wait a week for them to be delivered to that location...
The people who don't use the net at all are literally dying off. The people who do use it won't be able to comprehend the lifestyle of the small minority who still don't, any more than I can really comprehend people who don't use ATMs. The bigger and more capable the net gets, the less sense it makes to maintain a whole separate infrastructure just to support the holdouts.
The closest match to this situation today would be Japan. Can you get by in Japan without a cell phone? Maybe, but I doubt the average Japanese person would have any idea how. That's "unimaginability" for you. They couldn't imagine it.
Yup. It should be cheap as hell and everywhere.
The U.S. is determined to make itself obsolete - and sooner rather than later! That's why the looting is so fast and furious these days. Eventually we'll end up just one more population of rioting people demanding economic parity like other third world labor countries are doing right now. Just watch how the U.S. becomes irrelevant during the next century thanks to our inability to innovate thanks to laws that favor the few against the many.
It's all about the price of labor, and driving that price down, down, down...
A lot of technology gets talked about on Slashdot is ultimately pinned to what some shmoe worker at Kwik-E-Mart can afford, and if s/he cannot afford it don't expect that technology to become ubiquitous.
this tells me one thing - lots of people wont pay for a connection when they can get what they need done on somebody else's network...
>When broadband is a necessary means to some end, some killer app, they'll want >broadband.
;-)
Some of us need killer apps. Some of us make our own. For me the killer app is simply the data itself - as in more of it. More of whatever it is I want. I went from 56k dialup to 1.5mb dsl, and I spent the first three days literally in mild shock. I felt like I'd been rectally implanted with a warp drive.
So yes, initially it takes getting used to...but would I go back? NEVER!
Then again, judging by the amount of spam/spyware doing the rounds, that's probably a lower percentage than the population of world internet users as a whole...
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
45% of Americans say it's simply too expensive.
30% say that they just don't want it.
14% say they feel dial-up is adequate for their needs.
10% are not able to get broadband access in their area.
05% percent insist broadband is "too complicated".
05% aren't even sure why they don't have it..."
===
109% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Actually, in Korea, only old people have mod points.
My evil and much feared mother in law was happy with dial up too. Until I forced broadband on her by sneaking the installation guy into her house when she was on vacation. She is incredibly happy with it now and says she doesnt know how she lived with out it. The only problem now is that she is a total net nut and stays up till 4 in the morning totally wired on coffee. Maybe dial up is better for some people, but I would rather shoot myself than access the net via a modem ever again.
$50/mo for DSL? I don't know where you live, but SBC Yahoo offers it for 12.99/mo.. I agree with you on cell phones, but DSL is so cheap these days it's pointless to have dial-up unless it's your only option
At any given moment, if you live in a crowded area, you can just tell any computer that contains a wireless card to connect to the nearest wireless network, and pay absolutely nothing for your internet access. In the city, there's literally an unencrypted network nearby, no matter where you are. Mind you, this is due to human error, and is wrong to exploit, but man, people are stupid. I live behind a police station and once unintentionally accessed s computer on their network and started browsing through their files, thinking it was my own box...oops! So much for the "connect to the nearest unencrypted WAN" option!
I think I know any one now who accesses the internet by dialup nowadays. But I guess that has something to do with fibre broadband generally being quite cheap and widespread here in sweden. ADSL is the new dialup here ;)
ok here's my problem,i'm literely stuck with dial up and i REALLY want to get but a couiple of problems,we've got only two sources for high speed adelphia high speed but with my cable bill over $180 a month and verizon only serves a small area so i'm stuck with dial up until we can get either cheap high speed or dsl where i live
as a usa customer i just downgraded from 6meg to 4meg comcast to wow because sourceforge was the ONLY site hitting my max the telicos want there cake and eat it too while having you by there cake if you want HI SPEED in the us then BUY a t1 and $$$$$$ up the a$$
"I don't pitch OpenSUSE Linux to my friends, i let Microsoft do it for me
And here I am wondering how fast a connection I can get for under $200 amonth.
Come on, people, bring me fiber to the home! I want real broadband.
The other reasons make some kind of logical sense to me, but what the hell does "they just don't want it" mean? How is this separate from "Dialup is fast enough for my needs?" Does it mean they actively LIKE having a connection that is butt-slow on any kind of modern, flash-heavy website?
+++ATH0
Why would it be "almost unimaginable" that there will be people who won't make much use of the Internet 15 years from now?
It might not be uninmaginable that there are people who don't need broadband access to you, but it could be to people trying to run a dialup ISP. Just like there will always be a market for albums recorded on audio cassette, but at some point no record label will care.
After a certain point, there are simply not enough subscriibers in an area to justify having a local access number in a town. And when that happens it becomes more cost effective to have broadband instead, even if you don't need it. The cable company I work for has cable modem service at 256Kb down/64Kb up for $24.95 a month. Most people would not even consider such access "high-speed internet" but at a cost of only a few dollars more than AOL or Earthlink and speeds of up to five times faster than a modem with an always-on connection that doesn't tie up the phone line, it's a no brainer. The only real drawback is the service isn't portable if you're away for home. I expect low end service like this to eventually replace dialup ISP's, but I expect it will be wireless-based to cater to the buseiness user who needs access from anywhere.
Around here we have single mode fiber optics to every house(http://gcpud.org/zipp.htm). This gives us (gave us) essentially unlimited bandwidth. Since then, bandwidth has been capped at the ISP end to a measly 600kbs on port 80, and a snail like 350kb/s on 21. I used to get closer to 10mb/s through either.
Anyway, couple years ago when this was still new, a company requested a T1 line from the PUD (for reference, the fiber lines are 1gbps to the house, split into 100mbps ethernet). No matter how much the PUD representatives explained to them how much faster and 100% better fiber optics were than T1, this company said "No, we need a T1!" So the guys installed the fiber optics and told them they had a T1.
When I see "The Yankee Group", I don't even bother reading TFA. Did you know that "The Yankee Group" means "Complete Utter Tripe" in spoken Ancient?
--S
-- sigs cause cancer.
They don't appreciate how annoying it is to wait on things on the Internet because they've never had it any other way. My grandma was like that. She had Juno dalup, it was like $5/month or something and made you look at ads. She claimed she didn't want a cable modem because it was too expensive. Why should she pay $35/month for something she got for $5/month? Finally my uncle made her get cable. She loves it, and won't go back now.
I got DSL over six years ago, and have spent close to $100 a month, between telco local loop and ISP charges, ever since. I did this primarily because I wanted to be able to host web sites, email, and other services on a home Linux box. DSL availability even had a big impact on where we chose to live last time we moved.
For the last few years, though, it's been more of an albatross. I don't need or want my own MX that badly any more, what with Gmail (and now the Gmail for domains thing). I can host a really really large number of web sites, with email for each domain, for probably something like $25 a month.
So... at some point in the future, all the stuff hosted "in-house" (ha ha, it's really in a house!) will wind up sitting at a real hosting place (much of it already has) with real bandwidth, yadda yadda. And maybe we'll have broadband, or maybe we won't... it won't really matter that much.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
...portability.
As a full-time laptop user, I have only just started spending enough time online at home to want broadband. I'll be applying soon(ish).
I shelled out for it 5 years ago for my office (PC-PHIX) and have access to it where I am working currently so that takes care of about 80% of my bandwidth needs. I check my email at home, but the rest of my use (and a higher percentage than my home usage) is done at customer's premises or friend's houses via their connections.
Since I can't take broadband with me wherever I go, it's dial-up or 'borrowed' WiFi the rest of the time.
I'm not paying for dial-up AND broadband when there is nothing at home connected to the broadband service and I don't make any calls from home so I don't need VoIP.
I also use this same dial-up account on my test laptop at work, my mobile phone (for email) and previously my handheld PDA too.
So technically (if I lived in the US), I'd fall into either the 30% (don't want) or the 14% (dial-up is adequate [because broadband is not]) or the crossover of them both.
And yes, I realise there are portable broadband solutions, but here in Australia the choices are limited and all fall into category #1 - too expensive!
Optimist: The thumb drive is half empty! Pessimist: The thumb drive is half full...
I started with 56k hell before going to Verizons 100+ hours on hold 768k DSL before finally settling with my 3000k cable connection.
Recently, the cable company was having some problems with outages. After a big outage, that they admitted to, I noticed some problems so I gave tech support a call. I got the typical retarded responses we've all accustomed ourselves to with tech support. He didn't fix shit but the problem went away in a few days, was on their end as it usually is.
Anyway, well this fucktard was poking buttons pretending he was fixing the problem for me, the shit-for-brains switched me to their 256k service without saying anything. It took me about a week to figure out something was totally fucked up. I originally assumed they were still having problems, movie previews and video clips were taking forever and my porn was loading slower than ever.
I did a speed test and quickly concluded what happened and called their billing department (cut to the chase) and told them to fix it and knock some money off my next bill. She told me that it had been changed but no note as to why. I wanted to tell her all sorts of creative things but settled for $25 off my bill and an apology. I really did want to nail their ass to the wall and ask them how often they BS people by downgrading their service without telling them while charging them the full rate, go to BBB and all... but fuck it, it still pisses me off but I got better things to do than start a big campaign against the cable company, things like catching up on my porn.
Short story long, that week at 256k was a nightmare, I couldn't live without 3mbs and can't imagine how people do. Going to 56k would be like pulling out a telegraph to make a phone call.
Do you really think a big-name like SBC or Comcast gives a rats arse about you if anyone requested to see your browsing records? How do you know they aren't already in cohoots with GW to spy on you?
At least with a local dialup ISP there's more work involved to spy on you. And customers are much more valuable to a mom-n-pop establishment.
Why should my money go to a big-name duopoly for net access? If broadband was available at every mon-n-pop ISP we could have real choice and a better chance of security.
Yep, right, I think for most people here without DSL it's just that the monopolist Telekom doesn't want to connect unprofitable areas with DSLAMS, because there is also nearly no competition with other technologies. Also, flatrates just come with dsl, not with dial-up, so none wants to have dialup, as it's usually much more expensive than the 15 - 25 for dsl.
... are wayyy to stupid to get it.... or to get *anything* at all.
Guess that's what they call "evolution" nowadays...
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
10% haven't figured out how to, or can't cancel their AOL subscription.
Broadband isn't too expensive, especially if you've been paying your telco for the second line so you can surf and not miss phone calls.
2nd line: $17
AOL: $21.95
Getting 20x the speed at around the same price as the above: priceless
Nathan
I think that they are too big now to download with dialup, which means each time you go online, there is a risk that your computer gets a virus, spyware, etc.
Modern viruses do not harm too much the computer but they still make it slower, less reliable..
Many people don't understand/care about security (especially those who tend to be on dialup), but IMHO to have a 'healthy' computer there is now middle ground either you stay off-line or you use broadband (and patch your computer).
Note that using Linux on dialup is not without drawbacks too: bugfix version of OOo, FF, etc are not light too, even though it is more about fixing/improving apps than about security problems.
you could get broadband but pay as you go, or for how much you download. That would really bring in alot of the people who think it is too expensive and wouldn't use enough, old people in general don't use the internet that much, but they would seriously benefit while downloading thier image ladden emails from relatives. OT: But why do old people tend not to scale down images they send if they are on dial up?
Michael-m.co.uk - Home of Michael Mulqueen
...with images off, scripting off, and no flash installed or blocked, around half the internet doesn't work anymore, and it is getting worse daily. Maybe it's not exactly half but sure seems that way to me, and I HAVE to use the web for one of my part time jobs. I'm on dialup-no choice, broadband of any sort beyond satellite-on-windows is unobtanium here, and no way am I going to run windows (just not happening, don't need the grief) and pay 100 bucks a month for "service" from some sat company, that's just robbery and boneheadedness. So I try to do those dialup "speedup" tricks and get frustrated because webmasters just will not provide alternative pages. The ones that do usually have pages that are decent anyway, seems they care and code well. Other sites have no alt-text for image navigation, or use FLASH for navigation, or *insist* on you having JS turned on, and it is so easy to bork your browser once you got a few sites flashing at you and JS pulling down the latest spam or malware du juor, or you simply get stuck, can't go on, there's no way to even see the source to try and figure out what the nav links are if the index page is all flash.. sux.
Kudos to slashdot though, their "lite" version is just fine, I find no need whatsoever for the full slow version. Once you've seen borg gates or the foot, well, you don't need to see them again.
Let's give everyone Broadband free for 3 months. At the end of free trial, they can all go over to my mother's house where I suffer on dial up every time I visit.
...psssst.... first one's free! Then we've got 'em!!!
well F@#$ them!
modem's simply not an option anymore.
i "need" broadband for the low latency it gives my interactive sessions -- a 56K modem is plenty of bandwidth, but the 200ms RTT is painful. i would happily provision "less" bandwidth, but the pricing for ISDN or a 56K DDS line is completely ridiculous no matter who your provider is.
In Germany, broadband (DSL) usually comes with a flatrate plan (10 a month is typical), whereas dialup is generally metered, which makes DSL much more attractive for most people.
If dialup is available with some kind of flatrate plan in the US, that might explain why many stick with it, if they don't need the speed.
What I mean is boradband is good and great, if one needs it. As with everything, the need of the people should be the reason that they buy something, not some providers' penetration numbers: if one needs broadband connection for some reason, (s)he should be able to buy one, if not, (s)he should be able to buy a connection which has the speed (s)he needs. Crying because not so many people buy broadband as providers would see fit, is nothing that people in general should give a damn thought about. I for one don't live in the US, still I have broadband connection at home for some years now. However just a few months ago I switched my connection back down to 1mbit (adsl) since I simply don't need more for home use (and that also includes many hours per day remote working from home). Point is: buy what you need, and providers should provide what you ask for not sell you stuff you don't need (yes, I know I'm not realistic, I also live on this planet, still).
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
The reason for the lackluster demand is that animated gifs make perfectly good porn. Most porn is just back and forth movements of the same kind over and over. Animated gifs can repeat the same 10 frames over and over for the same effect. What is needed is to transform people into a species that has more varied sexual movements, such as figure 8's that morph into W's, etc. Butterflies have the right idea; they do it in the air in a frenzied dizzy kind of sky dance (although JavaScript may be able to mimic this without lots of frames). As usual, the real problem is the damned humans. Until the marketing department figures this out, they will continue to drive Honda Civics.
Are you from California?
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I am also conncected now at 26.4K on dial-up but, am actually quite happy. I live in Arizona and in my neighborhood, everyone is only able to connect at 26.4K with their 56K modems. Qwest does not yet offer DSL in my neighborhood and I don't have cable either. Some of my nearest neighbors actually do have cable and broadband. My Canary WiFi hot-spot detector indicates that several of neighbors seem to have open 802.11b/g wireless connections which are still broadcasting their default SSIDs. But, I have resisted the temptation to get a high gain yagi or parabolic antenna and try connecting for free high-speed Internet access. That would probably would be illegal and I don't need high speed that badly.
There are several tricks that I use to stay happy at this speed. Most browsers such as Firefox offer tabbed browsing. Tabbed browsing helps because I can start one page loading while I am still finishing reading something in another tab. Until recently, IE didn't offer tabbed browsing which made it far inferior on a slow dial-up connection. However, when using tabbed browsing I always watch out for pages that keep reloading on their own and close those web pages as soon as I am through reading them.
I use Linux, on one of my two computers by the way. It is my main desktop computer. I frequently find interesting new programs for Linux that I want to download. There are hundreds of great free Linux programs waiting to be downloaded. Some of them are 10Mb or more in size which means about an hour or more of downloading. No problem, I just start them downloading just before I go to sleep or go to work. I then set crontab to automatically disconect me after what I calculate should be more than enough time to finish the download. I have occasionally had the computer downloading 80Mb or more files while I was sleeping.
There are several websites that will send the latest Linux CDs for several dollars each, so I don't need to download the free 600 or 700 Mb disk images. Another alternative for downloading an occasional large file is to take my laptop over to a resteraunt in town that has a free WiFi hotspot.
I really don't understand why some people say we all need DSL or broadband. I hope it isn't because of all the porn or illegal MP3s they are downloading. My 26.4K connection seems fine. Earlier today, a Qwest employee metioned some new upgrades going on in my neighborhood and suggested that DSL might possibly be available soon. If that happens, I might actually go ahead and upgrade just so that my telephone line wont be busy so much of the time.
Keeping your OS (at least Windows or Linux) up to date and patched pretty much *requires* broadband. I think that's the reason there are a lot of vulnerable machines out there.
I have asked several people who are still on dial-up how they keep their systems up to date, and every one of them has said that they "turned that damn update thing off!" because it was so annoying and made it impossible to do anything useful.
Unless you are geeky enough to care about patching and manage your limited dial-up bandwidth, you are not going to update over a dial-up.
When I was still on dial-up, I compared the cost of keeping a Debian system up to date over the dial-up to the cost of DSL, and it was a wash. That's what motivated me to get broadband, it cost the same as far as keeping my system updated, and I could use it for the rest of the month at no extra cost.
But most folks don't care about staying updated, so they see no need for broadband.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
NO! That's completely UNTRUE. It's trivially easy to go to Verizon or SBC's website and verify this, so it's really ridiculous you got modded up for saying something so easily disproven. It is a 12-month commitment, but that's not a big deal.
I'm willing to bet you've never had DSL. Cable companies are fond of "renting" you a modem perpetually, but DSL companies almost always give you one for free when you sign up (minus $10-20 for shipping).
And, like dial-up, you can walk into a store and buy a DSL modem if you chose.
I would have, if that were the case, but IT'S NOT. You're just oh-so-wrong.
If you keep your eyes shut, you won't see much. Try LOOKING, and you will see them.
http://www22.verizon.com/ForHomeDSL/channels/dsl/
https://swot.sbc.com/swot/dslMassMarketCatalog.do
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
But while I'm not at all surprised by this, I think the fact is that the US will eventually have cheap broadband like it or not.
The problem with broadband for many Americans is that they don't see the advantage in it. Many Americans can afford to pay for many of the things that people in other countries might only be able to get by downloading them freely off the net. So, in a way Americans have blinders on with regards to the possibilities of the Internet.
An excellent, and I would even say profound, example is academic journals. An American could be forgiven for thinking that all universities across the globe have libraries with stacks and stacks of academic journals just like the local state university library does. In fact, that's not the case at all. In many nations, broadband is enabling a great leap in educational quality that gives millions of students the chance to study meaningful cutting-edge research for the first time in their local academic history. Americans naturally have a hard time imagining what that means or how important it is because they already have practically free access to these things. Anybody in the States can use the university library after all. So, for an American, the issue of getting journals on the Internet seems somewhat irrelevant.
So, broadband is definitely something that the US is only going to accept reluctantly, but slowly or not it is most certainly going to come even if the US is the last place on earth to get decent broadband penetration which I could easily imagine having just visited there and having been forced to use a modem on a number of occasions.
People keep forgetting that the geographical area of the USA is a lot larger than Japan, S. Korea, etc.... Try wiring all of Texas for broadband? Heck, it's larger than Japan & S. Korea combined! Yes, I'll give you that a lot of those countries are ahead in penetration of technology, but here, we have a lot larger area to wire for broadband, and we are spread out over a larger area.
However, I still think my risky (dumb) assumptions (without looking, which I stated) were closer to the truth than the parent, who simply stated DSL costs $13-$15 per month and compared these rates to non-introductory dial-up rates. Don't dial-up ISPs have introductory rates? He mentioned nothing about $13-$15 being limited introductory rates or possible local phone requirements.
Yes, I use Comcast. Compared to DSL users, I know squat about DSL. I also have a friend who got stuck with an early termination fee from SBC/Yahoo DSL when she moved ten miles up the freeway to an area SBC/Yahoo didn't serve (Novato, CA). Because of situations like this, I think it's irresponsible to claim DSL costs $13-$15 without mentioning the other requirements.
I'm not trying to diss DSL in general. I'll probably switch, even at their regular rates, because they're more likely to offer lower rates for lower speeds. I don't need Comcast's freakin' 5M/384K up/down.
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
In that time, I'm amazed at how many services or features on the modern OS X Tiger Mac are network-reliant. All those cute Widgets pull in data from the net and really cease to function without internet connectivity.
This was illustrated for me vividly when my parents moved from a well-served community in Florida to rural South Carolina. They live near a lovely little town with miles of scenic cotton fields (Elloree is the town - tres cute), but there's only one internet provider in town. They have some crazy expensive 'business' DSL for the little patch of a town, but only a wireless microwave scheme for the rest of the surrounding area: http://www.ntinet.com/
So, they're on dial-up which is an insanely slow 33.6-ish and now she isn't really able to log on and use, say, iChat or Skype or even see my latest photographs ( http://homepage.mac.com/nevermore/ ).
My mum never thought she needed broadband before, but now longs for the day we can stay in touch quickly, easily and (fairly) cheaply. Broadband at $50 monthly isn't sooooo much, is it?
If you've had access to a connection with real bandwidth - something like the 1Gbit connections you get in good university computer labs - then you know what the internet can really be like: every loads instantly, videos play with no buffering or delay, 10Mb downloads take a couple of seconds, latency for gaming hovers around 20ms, and so on. But if all you've had is Earthlink or AOL DSL (which is NOT always on, but instead basically dials up via PPPOE on demand), then you've never really experienced broadband at all.
A-Bomb
Does this spell doom for WiMAX? What if noone's really bothered about it? Scary thought.
So that's 45+30+14+10+5+5= 109 accounted for - so how many DO have broadband? ;)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
People are stupid and scared of technology, nothing else.
that is all....
flamebait? me? never.....
104% of americans dont have broadband?
In Estonia (Northeastern Europe), 52% of the 6-74 yr age group are using the internet, as of Feb 2006. 1MBit cable internet costs US$20/mo, cable TV with 90 channels an additional US$5, and if you don't have cable, you can get ADSL for about the same price. Free WiFi coverage, albeit only in larger cities, is overwhelming. Mobile penetration is nearing 100%. There are more internet bank users than people who actually go to the bank. You can pay all your bills online, declare your taxes online in about 4 minutes, and also vote online (google: "e-voting, Estonia"). So on and so on... Of course, all that is relatively easy to implement in a country with a population of 1.5 million.
I said over ten years ago that the most important thing that the US government could have done is to socialize the internet connectivity across the country the same way that they have socialized asphalt connectivity by means of Interstate highway systems circa 1930-1940.
Same kind of approach plays in with the Post Office. Everyone gets mail delivery no matter how remote or how dense the population. Not all mail is gauranteed delivered in 3 days but it's delivered.
I think we, as a nation, could have done well to take that stance that everyone will at least have a standardized connection to their homes such that everyone has the capability of getting a modest DSL like connection into their home for a fixed fee (with no trimmings) much like you have garbage collection fees or road maintenance fees from the local government.
What the individual decides to do after this, higher bandwidth, ISP services like portals and email.. can all be managed in the consumer market. But at least you have the road available.
This country experienced huge changes economically and socially as the result of the US Highway infrastructure. I believe that creating an analogy of an internet infrastructure would cause the same kind of impact on this nation. Right now we don't have such a mechanism. The growth of internet businesses and society is at a strangehold based on what you can afford to pay. It's economically restricted.
Hate to sound like a socialist, but sometimes I think there are some things that can be considered best if socialized.
So we're nearly there. :-)
Most places don't have that, thanks to the FCC engineered duopoly and that's very bad for the US economy. The local Bell wants that much for dial up and won't give you DSL for less. The local cable company want's it's fifty bucks a month, just like the phone company gets when you add the price of a land line. "Broadband" will remain expensive and I predict some people will quit using it and the US will fall further behind the rest of the world, at great cost of US businesses.
The only people who win in this situation are Holywood and the telco monopolies. People will continue sucking up movies and "consuming" other content through their choiceless and "pay per view" entertainment channels. As Holywood jacks up their rates more people will drop their cable modem costs. There's great entertainment at the Internet Archive and Magnatune, but it's not enough yet to replace the cable for most people. The losers will be anyone who wants to eliminate paper and the US post from their lives. Combined with M$ mal and spyware, dial up is unusable for business forms even the most efficient web forms LAMP can provide. The cost of business as usual is staggering.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I use dialup and I ..... [no carrier]
Drop Dialup -15ish
Pay $50/mo for cable modem, +50
drop your POTS line, -(12..65)
get VOIP service +25
Profit! maybe.
So let me get this straight...
Apparently 100% of Americans do not have broadband!-- null
FTA:
45% Too Expensive
30% Just don't want it
14% Dial up is adequate
10% Can't get it
05% Too complicated
05% Don't know
Even my math isn't that bad!
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
Don't know where they get these statisitcs at but locally 60% of my friends can't live without their broadband, 40% live in a rural area that doesn't offer it, and 100% of them say dialup sucks. Ofcourse 80% of all statistics are made up.
NTT provides broadband access for a fraction of the price that we get it for in the U.S.
Maybe that has something to do with the fact that Japan was essentially reduced to mostly rubble 60 years ago while we in the U.S. deal with OSP that is both that age and has never been properly maintained.
But here is a good example of why most people don't get even DSL. I'll present two cases here, the first my own, the second that of a relative in the same state.
Verizon said that I was too far from the central office to get DSL. "That's funny" said I since I could basically throw rocks at the central office.
Did two go arounds on this until finally I got the bright idea to call repair and get them to do an MLT. Sure enough, MLT said I was less than half a mile from the CO. I asked repair to enter the distance into my customer record and then called Verizon DSL back. Lo and behold - I now qualified.
In my aunts case, the home had DSL before she bought it and the previous subscriber had the line disconnected. When my aunt tried to get DSL installed she was told by Verizon that they she was too far out. I told her to use the trick I'd discovered and sure enough, two weeks later she had here DSL.
I've since ditched Verizon entirely but this demonstrates that in the case of DSL, if you don't know how the system works, you're screwed.
And I trust this article because:
45% + 30% + 14% + 10% + 5% = 104%
Here in Venezuela the most cheapest plan for Internet BroadBand(384K) is Bs. 92.000(Around US$ 43). It reaches around 500.000 suscribers of the total population of the country, around 28 Million people.
I'm a consultant in central Illinois, USA. Once you're outside of Chicago with it's associated 'burbs, your options for broadband become pretty limited. If you're near Peoria, Springfield, Champaign, Decatur, or Kankakee, you have some options with DSL and cable broadband. Some of the small towns, populations > 200, also have cable, but it's typically only because some mom and pop cable company built it up and then. SBC offers DSL only within a couple of miles of town. There is a subdivision of more than 500 homes right outside of Peoria and Bartonville, both of which have DSL. Yet the subdivision doesn't. Until the cable provider brought in a couple of T-1's about 3 years ago, no options existed. Yet this is less than 3 miles as the crow flies from Bartonville. And there is a new switch and fiber (both less than 10 years old) running right along the road outside the subdivision. And we all know that SBC isn't readily doing any landline buildout for areas they "already cover." Verizon covers some of the towns in the region, like Canton. But guess what? You can't even get proper caller ID for your PBX from Verizon in that region. Antiquated equipment with no likelihood of change for a while. There are also numerous other telcos involved in the region, none of who provide services beyond basic voice grade lines if you're outside of town limits. Insight (ATT) provides high-speed services via cable, and they were doing build-outs in central Illinois, but they have a formula that they use to determine whether they're going to invest. They look for existing fiber, but will add as needed. However, more than 75% of the towns in the region don't fit their profile. If the town's population is less than 1,000, meaning a likely household count of less than 300, chances are you will never see cable. Insight even does a drive-though, counting satellite dishes if the numbers get close. If they see too many, forget it, they're not returning. Riverton has cable and DSL and is just 4 miles from the city limits of Springfield, the state capital. Yet if you live only a mile outside of Riverton, you have no broadband options. The list goes on. Effected population? Hundreds of thousands in Illinois alone. And they don't all have the option to "move to town for a better connection."
Beat that.
Hm....
45% to expensive
30% don't want it
14% find dialup adequate
05% too complicated
05% unsure
Doesn't that equal 99%? In which case shouldn't the 10% be 1% (which in turn means 1% have broadband) - either that or the survey has redefined 100% to be 110%...
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
When I was in grad school (1998-2003) my brother paid $50/month for his cable modem. I couldn't afford anything like that, so I relied on free dial-up from my university. When I started a postdoc in 2004, the local phone company (Verizon) offered DSL for $30/month. A bit more income and a bit lower price, so I got it. A few months ago my phone company started advertising $15/month plans. Those were for a lower speed than the standard DSL, but I called and got discounted to $25/month for my connection.
AlpineR
I've spent the past 5 years in areas where broadband was not available until recently. In the Southwest, there are areas where there is no telephone landline service, and some pretty good swaths of land where there is no electricity. In northern NY, here I live now, they just started rolling out DSL on a very limited basis.
It's hard for some of you to realize that the options you take for granted simply don't exist, and won't exist for some areas. I don't have a cell phone for the simple reason that there is no cell phone service here. There won't be for quite some time - environmental regulations. The cable companies here have no interest in offering anything more than basic and I do mean basic service! Yeah, you have to decide whether you're going to use cable, DSL, wireless, how much speed you want and how much you're going to pay. Some of us don't have those options at all. The options are satellite or paying for a T1 - and both are pretty damn expensive.
It's also been pointed out that many people don't feel the need for broadband. I know that's hard to imagine in this forum, but out in the Real World, it's true. Yes, I love broadband, and need it. I'm constantly downloading programs for trial/evaluation, CD ISOs for various OS distros, security patches, and browsing tech forums, and dial-up isn't going to cut it. But a lot of people don't do that. They check their e-mail, maybe browse a news or weather web site, an occasional search, and IM. You don't need broadband for that, dial-up works just fine. Yes, broadband makes all that nicer and faster, but it isn't a need.
The upshot is that until there's a real need at a reasonable price for the majority of people, you're not going to have universal broadband. Even then, remember there are an awful lot of people who don't need a computer! :D
...some people are sick of the crap that their computer constantly vomits into their lap.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Down here in South Florida, we have to deal with a sales tax, a state communications tax, AND a local/county communications tax on our cable and cell phone bills. So, it's just a matter of deciding which carrier's plant you trust more when tropical storms hit.
...
BellSouth has made major inroads, thanks to the high population density making it worth their while to put in DSL nearly everywhere - a far cry from when I lived in rural New Hampshire 12000 feet from the nearest SLIC box in a one-exchange CO town and Verizon was still thinking about installing DSL. They were able to get their stuff running rather quickly after Wilma, and have continued to tidy up their patchwork repairs in the ensuing months. We had voice landline service all along.
Comcast however, swallowed up AT&T Broadband who'd swallowed up MediaHun, who'd swallowed up Jones Intercable. They are *still* fixing problems with their plant. Of course, everyone says, "what do you expect when the worst hurricane to hit [Broward] County in 50 years?". Well, according to the folks they brought down from up north to rebuild the plant, it's riddled with problems that were there all along and never got fixed, such as sucked out connectors (caused by installers working on a 75F day forgetting that it occasionally gets down into the 40's and causes the copper center conductors to contract back from the contact points in the connectors), amplifiers that were installed wrong and never balanced, etc. We were without cable TV and Internet service for over a month well after Wilma left town, and it took 4-5 visits from both out-of-town contractors and senior local repair personnel to resolve the issues in our neighborhood. Calling and complaining only got yet another appointment scheduled for a rep to come to the house. After the fourth visit, it was obvious that the problem was upstream somewhere, but Comcast's call handling system doesn't cope with that kind of observation.
To add insult to injury, they *REQUIRE* you to have MS Windews on your computer when the droid (who speaks barely enough English to get a Green Card) comes to 'install' your Internet connection. Funny, MediaCom up in North Carolina didn't require Windows - they merely used a fairly simple web page to do the initial authentication. What took days with Comcast took minutes with MediaCom, with the same computer and same brand of rented Roadrunner box.
The installer there had never seen Linux in use, but knew of Firefox and thought it was cool to see it in action on a non-Windows OS - he knew it was supposed to work, but none of his customers had ever demonstrated it to him.
So, it seems fairly obvious to me that Comcast is milking it, big-time, at our expense, with the politicians gleefully raking in their cut (25-30% in all) of the vigorish
A couple of vendors- Verizon/SBC, Charter and Comcast have absolute grip over acccess to everyone's household. Unless you live in a major city- and I mean IN the city- you usually have only one and at most two options- the local cable monopoly and the local phone monopoly. Nobody else can play.
How can we expect people to pay the resulting exhorbinate prices and put up with the lousy, and I mean lousy, service which these monopolies provide? It's $40/month for the lowest band of 384k down/128k up "service" in my town. There's only one provider- Charter internet and their terms of service (no in house servers, etc) and service are terrible. They refuse to support Linux in any form or fashion and just try to get a convenient appointment out of them...
Until the people of the US become upset enough to demand multiple companies be given access to the physical infrastructure coming into our houses we'll continue to fall behind the rest of the world when it comes to broadband usage.
You wouldn't be here otherwise. (Or do you think a stork brought your parents? You might be like my adopted 4-year-old, who thinks that babies come from hospitals.)
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
is not what i would call half the people in a small numer of small countries ?-)
Hey, I can read slashdot from work.
I see some benefits, but I could readily live without it at all - not even dialup, at home. My wife uses skype to talk to her family in another country for free, but if I were paying $50 less a month, I'm sure that would more than cover the average bill.
Let's face it; most of the things we have for our personal use: broadband, cellphones, laptop computers... most of us wouldn't be negatively impacted by getting rid of them. In fact, probably a lot of our lives would improve.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
This text and link was ripped off word for word from a Broadband Reports Post yesterday:
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/72112
Then burn, baby, burn.
'course if broadband was offered for $50.00/mo, I'd buy it.
Hear that, Verizon, with your crappy 21.6k dialup speeds?!!
Dollars right here waitin' for ya--come & get it!
wtf--can't have a > in the headline?
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
45% of Americans say it's simply too expensive. 30% say that they just don't want it. 14% say they feel dial-up is adequate for their needs. Less than 10% are not able to get broadband access in their area
Well if they reduced their price they could easily get the other 45%. If they reduced their price and increased their customer service they could probably convince some of the 30% to join. If they reduced their price they could also get a portion of that 14% (face it, if it is not that much more expensive you would pony up even if you do not need it - people do it all the time). The other 10% are screwed. The remaining 5% are just dumb (i don't get it, "I dont know why i dont hve broardband")??
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
> Another 5% aren't even sure why they don't have it..."
What about the ones who think they have it but don't, and the ones who don't think they have it but do?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The Mobile and entrenched utility companies are the ones that will continue making all the money. That will NEVER change unless the the same thing happens to these as what happened to Microsoft. Microsoft thought it had shut out competition such as OS2, Novell and so on. The same thing is occurring in the information transport business. The incumbent utility companies will act in the same manner. Each carves out a territory and form "partnerships" with like large companies (priority transmission, peering agreements, and content sharing). In most places, these utilities "compete" with each other while gouging customers with surprise fees, etc. The market is fixed and all meaningful competition to this type of price gouged service will be shut out. NOBODY can compete with these mammoth, government supported monopolies unless they provide nearly the same type of service under different rules like Linux has done to Microsoft and the entrenched unix companies. If there was a PC version of Unix that was sold at a reasonable price, Linus Torvalds most likely would have not been motivated to create Linux. The Linux model started out with do-it-yourselfers providing their own operating system and eventually, businessess caught on and started seeing the benefits of supporting Linux. Businesses now have a way of writing and distributing systems without being encumbered by overpriced licenses. The same type of thing will happen when hackers figure out how to build their own infrastructure. This type of infrastructure is already being built in communities around the world. These communities are called FreeWans, Muninets, and so on. If the entrenched monopolies do not start providing reasonable service for reasonable prices and without stupid restrictions, they might find a group of hackers forcing them to compete with free.
Keep in mind that the "keep it expensive" mindset in America's utilities corporations also means that the telcos are going to raise the price on dialup, through 2 means: periodic pushes to increase the costs (base price or fee) of basic service, and mergers of dialup companies producing a steadily more monopolistic environment.
A basic phone in the US is probably $20. On top of that, basic dialup is $15. DSL is starting to dip down to $35. And around here, the cost of basic phone service is going to go up again, perhaps a relatively large increase this time. For myself, I'll have to strongly consider making the change just to avoid paying more money.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
In my area it's either Cumcast or dialup. I am too far from the CO to get DSL. I think I will be sticking with dialup for a while, besides having a dynamic IP is nice.
Well, the other thing could be that most people perceive the Internet -- rather correctly, in my opinion -- not as some great gateway to free content, but to a lot of things which you need to haul out your credit card and pay for.
I'm not sure where all these great free research journals are on the 'net that you're talking about, but at least in the U.S., you won't be able to read crap without subscribing to a service, which is usually thousands of dollars a year. I went to a small university and we didn't even have access to some of the big-name medical journals because they were just too expensive to purchase full-text access to (we didn't have a medical school so they figured why bother, I guess). This was a while ago, but I don't imagine the situation is any different. I'll stop before I go off on a rant, but suffice it to say I think the whole research-journal industry is a big fat scam. Maybe in other countries, they're receving free or subsidized access to the databases, which is why the Internet is seen as a gateway to free content. But it's not that way here.
IMO, the biggest thing that drove home broadband adoption in the U.S. was MP3 music downloads. People went to college and had broadband, realized they could get music and stuff off of the Internet, and then when they graduated college or moved back home, didn't want to switch back to dialup. Now, it's widely perceived that the era of 'free stuff' on the 'net is over. If you want music or videos now (and aren't willing to pirate them -- which a lot of people are not, surprisingly, I think because of the lawsuits), you have to pay for them. I think the second biggest driver of broadband has just been impatience: web sites got more bloated, and people don't like to wait for them to load.
So I think maybe the 'free content' argument was behind broadband at one point, but it's not anymore. Hopefully there's still a perception of the internet being free in other places, but I think here's it's widely seen by people as basically an extension of the local shopping mall. Some free stuff, but most of the "good stuff" you have to pay for. I'm not saying that's correct or true, but it's the perception.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
> It's trivially easy to go to Verizon or SBC's website
Why would you trust what the web site says? The website isn't legally binding. I was billed about $45/month plus taxes for Hell$outh's $24.95/month service. Hell's web site claimed the service was $24.95. It didn't list any details, restrictions, or extra charges. If the Southern portion of this criminal organization didn't list them on their web site, what makes you think the other parts of the syndicate would?
My local broadband providers all require that I load their special software and hardware to get DSL. Guess what? It only runs on winblows.
From home, I'll get on the internet with windows when they cram my cold dead fingers into a light socket. Repeatedly.
Reason #2: with graphics turned off, I can load most of the froofroo pages (like CNN) almost as fast as DSL with the graphics turned on. Block the ad websites also, and I've got DSL-speed access without the advertisements.
The major reason that corporate US is concerned with home use of broadband is so that they can serve up more ads to their consumer cattle herds.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
Converted to USD, that is exactly what I paid for expanded cable and high speed (8 megabit) cable through Knology.
And the final 1% thought they were asking about a chick band, which they highly support!
For 90% of what I do on the internet - google searches, usenet, email, message boards, slashdot, PBEM gaming, etc - a ~50K connection is just fine - it all loads up in a few seconds (especially with images off).
For 600$ a year (local cost of broadband connection), I can wait a few hours to get to work if I have a really burning need to do more than idle on the information super-highway...
The problem with dialup is that many (most) applications nowadays are built for broadband. You have to monitor your connections all the time or you will end up downloading a 20MB adobe update while trying to read your email via 28.8 connection.
If you just need simple email access (gmail or any pop/imap client) then dialup is fine. My wife and I even share a dialup connection via wireless sometimes. It's not too difficult as long as you watch your attachments.
It's all the poorly written applications out there that assume EVERYONE has unlimited bandwidth and they can 'phone-home' all the time that make dilaup suck so bad. Even Windows has to talk to our Active Directory servers periodically even though I am logged into the local machine, what's up with that?
With Windows downloading patches, antivirus updating, Flash, Adobe, Realplayer, Quicktime and Java all updating at the same time even a T1 would have trouble (well, it would be a lot of traffic anyway).
I'm perplexed that anyone lives on dial-up anymore, excluding extreme technophobes.
There was a time, not too many years ago, when the Internet was geek-land. Everyone on it (it seemed) was into computers. Would surf for stupid personal webpages, talk on IRC, read Usenet, the usual "old school" types of uses. IM was just coming into its own, and was still mostly a geek thing. In terms of practical usage, the Internet had very little, unless you wanted to research something nerdy like computers or Star Trek trivia.
Suddenly (or so it seemed), everyone and their dog was e-mailing me. Mom. Dad. Grandma. Teenagers who spent their lives out drinking with their buddies now hooked up through MSN. These people cared little for computers as a hobby, they just treated them as a bigger cellphone. They started shopping. They started downloading music. The found out you could watch movies. Online banking. Tax returns. School research. You name it, they were doing it. All without any desire to be "a computer person", or worse, "a geek". The masses had discovered the Internet.
But forget video. What really has been the killer app for broadband is digital cameras. I have a few family members still on dial-up, and they constantly complain about pictures. They want to see them. With my measly little 2MP camera, and its images JPG'd to hell and back, a dial-up connection is just about useless for looking at more than a picture or two. And I don't take many pictures at a time. Imagine the average person, who takes 20 shots of the new puppy. His/her friend wants to see. 5-10MB of photos chokes a dial-up connection.
Damn near everyone seems to have a digital camera these days. And is taking pictures with it. And is sharing with their friends. I just don't know how the dial-up users cope.
This isn't just us geeks anymore. These are regular, normal people. And they use more bandwidth now than we ever did.
It's totally possible to live on dial-up. It's totally possible to live without the Internet. It just seems like a person almost has to TRY to do it these days.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
If it's anything like SBC here in Texas they bill you something like $50-$60 per month for the service and then issue a credit to adjust the rate down to whatever rate you agreed to when you signed up. In my case, it works out to exactly the $24.95 + taxes that I signed up for.
Folks, Ingredients for tricking out your dial-up: (Warning: this may be addictive!) 1) For the meager price of $20/month, one can get a www.linode.com VM/VPS account, 2) Install your 'flavor' (Ubuntu, least disk memory consumptive?) of Linux onto your linode, 3) ssh (secure shell) into your account and install KDE, FreeNX, enable the deamons at startup 4) Add user account to your Linux, 5) Add Linux user to NX 6) On your client machine, downloaod from www.nomachine.com a copy of the FREE NX Client, set up. 7) Dial-up your isp, 8) Fire up your NX Client and sign onto your linode account with your Linux username and password. BaBAM!! 'Thin Client' and the session is presented over a 1G (+) backbone! We don't need no 'stinkin' broadband! ;)
Ok then. Have a good day!
My brother shares a broadband connection with his neighbor. We bought a wireless AP/firewall and a UPS for his neighbor, and a USB wireless interface for his PC.
Voila!
Broadband for two houses for the price of one. Neighbor gets free wireless, 50% rebate on his service and my brother gets a half-price broadband connection.
Technically, I think it's against the provider's TOS, but I'm not all that concerned about that.
48.7% of statistics are made up on the spot
> Another 5% aren't even sure why they don't have it..."
Well, so now I've got to ask:
1: What percentage of people think they have broadband, but actually don't?
2: What percentage of people think they don't have broadband, but actually do?
While I'd like to see broadband more pervasive....I consider it, like TV a LUXURY. If your working at the Kwik-E-Mart...chances are, you don't have the money for a good computer to use with a broadband connection, nor the education/intelligence to really make use of or need it.
If you did...chances are, you wouldn't be working at the Kwik-E-Mart.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I was a broadband holdout until just a month or two ago. One of the main reasons I didn't make the switch sooner was that I didn't want to deal with yet another company trying to give me the shaft and providing shitty service all the time.
Where I live the broadband choices are Comcast for cable and Qwest for DSL. I've had many bad personal experiences with Qwest (and heard many, and observed court judgements against them), and heard many bad stories about Comcast.
I went with Comcast, but I didn't end up with a good feeling about the company after the order process. They have some borderline predatory/deceptive practices to get you to sign up for more than you want and count on you never cancelling/downgrading when the initial "promotional" price goes away. FFS, just sell me a good product that I want for a decent price!
-Rick
You're not willing to sell your mule and buy a tractor...OK, no big surprise, especially if you've fallen for crackpot schemes before. You're willing to sell your tractor and buy a mule? That would be news.
rj
45% of Americans say it's simply too expensive.
30% say that they just don't want it.
14% say they feel dial-up is adequate for their needs.
10% are not able to get broadband access in their area.
5% insist broadband is "too complicated".
5% aren't even sure why they don't have it...
Assuming that the "10%" is between 1% and 9%, this adds up to 100% to 108% of the population.
What's up with that?
Do the math. Drop the landline and get a cell phone and upgrade your cable to cable internet. It costs about the same. Too expensive argument doesn't fly.
Phone - $40/mth
Dialup - $20/mth
Cable - $50/mth
Total --------
$120/mth
Cell (no landline) - $40/mth
Cable W/Internet - $80.00
------------
$120/mth
There's no place like ~/
Those $15/mo DSL prices are not real, long-term rates. They are generally 1 year only and will go up to $30/mo, and don't include a mydriad of fees and taxes that adds another $10-15/mo. Furthermore, it is for the lowest end "broadband" service, sometimes as slow as 384kbit/s (which admittedly is still better than dialup).
So bottomline, the pricing is still around $40-60/mo for "broadband", which for many *is* too expensive. Even for me, who can afford it. Given that I have multiple T1 access at work, paying another $50/mo for cable modem is *very* marginally worth it to me...
Back in my day, a cup of coffee cost $0.50. Now it costs $2.50 at Starbucks and they burn the fucking beans. $2.50 for burnt coffee? And you get the pleasure of standing in line for 10 minutes, because all of the other coffee shops shut down.
"...like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. 'Give me five bees for a quarter,' you'd say."
Not having to pay for every minute online makes broadband worth its money.
Righto - gotta go wash up.
Last post!
> The problem with broadband for many Americans is that they don't see the advantage in it.
Also, for many Americans, the theoretical advantages are -not- advantages -to them-.
> Many Americans can afford to pay for many of the things that people in
> other countries might only be able to get by downloading them freely off
> the net. So, in a way Americans have blinders on with regards to the possibilities of the Internet.
A big point. And it's not merely Americans being able to pay for stuff. A lot of it is merely increased availability, whether for pricing model reasons or other reasons. One poster mentioned the near universality of free local phone calls, and broad access to local dial-up modem banks.
> An excellent, and I would even say profound, example is academic journals...
> In many nations, broadband is enabling a great leap in educational quality
> that gives millions of students the chance to study meaningful cutting-edge
> research for the first time in their local academic history. Americans
> naturally have a hard time imagining what that means or how important it is
> because they already have practically free access to these things. Anybody
> in the States can use the university library after all. So, for an
> American, the issue of getting journals on the Internet seems somewhat irrelevant.
> So, broadband is definitely something that the US is only going to accept
> reluctantly, but slowly or not it is most certainly going to come even if
> the US is the last place on earth to get decent broadband penetration which
> I could easily imagine having just visited there and having been forced to
> use a modem on a number of occasions.
There are a few other points. Pricing models on broadband, in the US, use the pricing models for cable television and cell phones as models. This results in what is frequently a truly monumentally stupid mix of conflicting options.
A lot of people, myself included, fully intend to go to broadband, and could afford to now. But there is no rush, and we are still hoping that a little more time and a little more salivating greed on the part of the broadband providers might result in cleaner and better deals.
Where in order to get the good price on cable access, we don't need to go to the Digital Premium Package and get 595 channels of crap, including 214 community access channels and 85 music channels that play a total of 2 hours of music a day. This is a contrast to the phone provider's DSL option, which was advertised as "coming in june" 6 years ago, and is still "coming in june" .
Additionally, many of us look at the fact that we wasting a lot of time on the net downloading crap we never look at now. We're delaying on broadband to avoid wasting more time downloading more more crap we'll never look at.
Yeah, there's good stuff out there; but not enough to compel immediate action. There's no rush.
I first got DSL in 1998. I was one of those people constantly calling the phone company (Pac Bell) bugging them. Some one made the mistake of actually giving me a direct number to some one in the department that was bringing it out. Later I switched to cable.
At the beginning of 2005 I moved to the Czech Republic for 7 months. There are plenty of internet Cafe's and places with free wireless in if you know where to look, but it is no where near as easy to get online for free as it is here in California. I eventually got a cell phone with bluetooth and GPRS internet. That is just slightly faster than dialup, and it was excruciating. If I needed to download a file over 40 M os so it was easier to go accross town to the internet cafe and pay to use their network. This wasn't Prague, it was Olomouc (a college town close to Brno).
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
Another 5% aren't even sure why they don't have it...
Course %30 thought the question was reffering to to hip rock band Four Non Blonds.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
in Japan and South Korea there is over a 90 percent literacy rate whereas in Texas only about 30 percent of the population knows the alphabet.
They have game servers and ftp sites with things like patches and OSS software. So 20 gig is heaps when you consider that gaming and Linux ISOs don't count towards your quota.
Unless the operating system distribution that you run on your computer happens to be one of the ones that the provider doesn't carry. The situation will only get worse over the next decade as ISPs start to specify in their terms of service that they may lock out unapproved operating systems from getting a routable IP address on a residential account.
Last summer my housemate and I got the basic Qwest DSL package. Phone for $12.99/month + DSL for $30.99/month. I was a little pissed off when the first bill came for over $100! After spending about 45 minutes trying to decipher the cryptographic layout and wording of the bill (other people I showed it to didn't understand it either), I decided that sales associate had done a poor job explaining the hookup fees, and it would all be better when the next month's bill for $43.98 arrived. When the next month's bill for $63 and some-odd cents arrived, I was definitely pissed. $19 in service fees? Screw Qwest. Between staying late after work, using the library, and hanging out on the unsecured wireless access point in my neighborhood, I don't need to subject myself to them lying to me.
As far as phone service now, it's T-mobile prepaid. $100 for 1,000 minutes and no other fees whatsoever (the phone itself was $40). I'm currently on pace to just barely use up all the minutes before they expire after 1 year.
Honestly, if they didn't resort to deception, I'd possibly be willing to split a $63 bill with one or two housemates.
The thing you're completely missing is that they require an additional $30/month or so for local land line phone service. I've never seen a DSL company do otherwise. Find one that has service in Pennsylvania, and I'll give you a cookie.
If you [had an education]...chances are, you wouldn't be working at the Kwik-E-Mart.
That's just it: chances. I have an education, but I happen to have been born outside centers of information technology employment, and I happen to have been born without enough money to purchase real estate in a center of information technology employment.
I bet a good chuck of those polled would change their mind if they had any idea about what you can do with a broadband connection.
On an unrelated note, 79% of most Americans are retarded.
- Danny
Since these folks were being kind enough to let me stay in their home, I thought to repay them by helping them install a LAN so the wife could share the broadband connection. Aside from being more convenient, it'd save them the cost of an extra phone line and ISP. But they just couldn't be bothered!
The first company I worked at with always on internet access was connected via a 64kbps frame relay. Dowloading slakware onto 1.2MB floppies tended to tie up the connection. (We took breaks between dowloading floppies to allow the mail backlogs to clear out.)
I didn't mind v.32bis internet access at home, once I put up an accelerated web caching proxy.
The motivation to go to broadband access was the fact that it is always on. If you walk across the room and hit the spacebar to power up the system, by the time you sit down and get comfortable, the browser is ready for use. No waiting to hit the dialup pool, no CHAP sequence to worry about, etc.
I'm on my second round of DSL. Verizon bought GTE in my locale, and Verizon is using different gear than GTE did. 3Mbit down is fast enough I almost wonder if the move to FIOS is going to be all that noticeable. With 5Mbit down and 1Mbit up, home users will be able to swap co-lo space with each other.
I think its funny that many people who claim to not see the value in a 30$ pre month broadband account are the same people who are paying 80$ per month for cable.
After 15 years with NTSC over the air, I just made the transition to ATSC over the air. With no cable bill to deal with, FIOS seems pretty affordable to me. I'd rather download my favorite shows anyway. Hopefully some internet-only production houses will spring up. I'd love to see a net-only version of Firely-2. Not likely to happen though.
I work for an ISP, and my answer to each of them is as follows:
45% of Americans say it's simply too expensive
Boo hoo, cry me a river, you want better service, it costs more. These are the same people who own gigundo screen tv's, and have dish network's "super-deluxe premium, all the porno channels, and hbo too" service for 109.95 a month, and they balk at another 40 bucks.... then they call in and bitch because dialup is too slow.
30% say that they just don't want it.
Well, I can't sell you something you don't want, but I'll bet you are the same person that calls the 3rd monday of every month, right on my lunchbreak, and gripes that our service is too slow. Ya know what else is slow? DIALUP! Seriously, some people simply believe that dialup should be "allowed" to go faster. No I am not kidding, some people actually believe that their phone line DS0 should go faster than 64k (that's 56k data, + 8k signalling channel for you non telco types). When people say this, I interpret it as, "I don't feel I should pay for broadband for faster service when its the government's fault that dialup is so slow." Got news for ya, for once in life, it is not the government's fault that something is slow and annoying!
14% say they feel dial-up is adequate for their needs.
Good for you, you are obviously very patient, I admire patient people, I am also very fond of selling them dialup. Patient people a) never call in with a problem because b) they seem to be more than happy to learn things on their own! Heaven forbid people realize that 99% of all PC issues are end user error. These people know it, I know it, why can't the rest of the world know it?
Less than 10% are not able to get broadband access in their area.
That number should be around 2%. My ISP branched into wireless a few years back (I do not consider us a wisp, we existed for years before wisps came out), but wisps are fucking everywhere. They are also, not hard to find, they really go out of their way to make themselves known, gotta get your voice heard over the cable and dsl providers, and they usually do so very well. Do the unamerican thing, ask your neighbor what that dish facing east on his roof is for.... I know americans don't talk to neighbors anymore, but come on people, at the worst, they look at you funny, at the best, you make a new friend, and find a broadband provider. Now you people who bought those huge mansions in the copse of trees? Yeah, your fucked, wireless doesn't like trees.... what's it gonna be? House in the woods? Or broadband, pick ONE.
Five percent insist broadband is "too complicated".
WTF are you, retarded, or just a standard issue human, for which, everything that you don't understand right away, is obviously too hard, beyond your abilities, and therefore worthless. Broadband makes connecting to the net easier, but you are too set in your ways, cannot be moved, no amount of talk can change that. You are obviously right, as opposed to just a stubborn bastard who feels no need to learn anything new.
Another 5% aren't even sure why they don't have it...
I'd wager this means you don't really care, and shouldn't waste any more time thinking about it. If your reading this, you have already wasted too much time thinking about it.
Uhh, yeah, my only argument is that people are a) stubborn, b) lazy, c) ignorant, and d) all of the above. Or, they really don't give a shit.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
"The big difference between the US and most of the rest of the world (okay, EVERYPLACE I CAN THINK OF, but I don't want to make generalizations), is that in the US we have free local calling. That means that if you want to call your ISP downtown, you can be on 24/7 and it doesn't cost you a dime more on your phone bill."
Except this ignores Canada, which has 53+% market penetration, etc.
I've had broadband for a decade now. The last two times in memory I had to use dialup was in 2001 when I went to the US for LWE, and again when I visited some relatives.
Convincing my US relatives that broadband is important is nigh on impossible, since they don't seem to understand the advantages of having a high-speed, packet-switched, digital network to their door when they can make a shitty phone call that does cost by the minute for long distance (and where I'd say other countries outstrip you, since I don't pay by the minute for my long distance!).
You can lead an American horse to water, but it's impossible to make it drink.
The future is in digital networks. POTS is dead. Cell phone service is on its way out. Once WiMax gets a serious hold, you'll be paying your local wireless ISP for a certain amount of data instead of paying your regional cell provider for minutes. That way, you can use your phone much more transparently. Long distance died most places in the 20th century.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
It costs about $45 for cable broadband. It costs about $40-45 for DSL when including the cost of the land line. For satellite, it's $60 (Direcway). Some broadcast wireless plans range from $40-60 for consumer accounts.
That is far too much money for what is usually a relatively poor service. Sure, it's a great deal faster than dial-up, but considering the many hiccups and service interruptions, the service is lousy.
Practically speaking here, I absolutely need to have broadband Internet or else the service isn't worth it to me. Most of us here know how it feels - to get broadband and not look back. If I'm forced to use somebody's dial-up account, I'll usually just get the absolute necessary information and log off.
But here in the States, the cost of broadband is ridiculous. For the pipes that these companies have, they should be offering better service, faster service, and chiefly, LESS EXPENSIVE service.
I have a condo in an association with about 53 other people. The building used to be a hub for US West's neighborhood network. So beneath our building is one of the biggest pipes in our metro area, yet our association has so far refused to tap into that. We could get a contract with any one of a number of providers and split the cost amongst all occupants. But of course, some people want freedom to choose and don't want the product pushed onto them.
Heck, these people complain that we have a bulk cable contract.
But to sum up, there is far too much available bandwidth and plenty of demand if the price was right. If it was lowered to $30 or even $20, we would see a huge surge in broadband connections.
The $45 price point right now is too much. It's actually to the point where I might discontinue the service because I am only using it during the weekdays and that's after spending hours online at work.
It's an easy $45 to cut. If it were $20, it would be tough to justify denying the convenience.
I said no to broadband because I live in the suburbs where there is only one "high speed" provider available (a cable company), and they suck ass.
I tried them, and they proved unreliable. They had to roll a truck 4 times in 2 months to fix wiring that they installed, dragging me away from my job which is 35 miles from home each time. Since I'd have to go back to work afterward, that made 140 miles on each of those days. Also figure in a total of 14 days of downtime in the 3 months that I had the service. Hell, I should have been charging THEM!
As soon as it seemed to start working right, I got a postcard in the mail detailing a rate increase to from $49.99 to $51.99/mo. + tax for my internet-only account (I have Directv for TV).
Goodbye, cable snake! I get 128k ISDN for $25 from a local shop now. Not as fast, but it costs half as much and it ALWAYS works.
Could be worse, I guess. I've got a friend that lives farther out in the sticks. He can actually get DSL, but he pays $109.95/mo for 1.5/256. Plus the phone. Ouch.
Out of order? Fuck! Even in the future nothing works! - Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) "Spaceballs"
So there!
I've had broadband for years at work, but I still use dialup at home. When I go online, I have my daily links (mostly commics) load into tabs and load while I go do something else. Other then that, I'm usually just googling for code or checking email. For me, a programmer, broadband just isn't worth it. And yes, I did get to play around online using my work connection. (during lunch break) so I know what I COULD do for fun.
If I win the lotto, I'll get broadband, otherwise, I'm sticking to dialup.
BTW: My wife just uses the internet to check email and IM friends about goats, so not much use for broadband for her either.
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
I live in the Poartland Or. Metro area. I get 768 DSL for 14.99 a month through verizon. I have never had any issues at all.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Unless you use Google and Yahoo for their own content, you are getting links to 99.99% of the web, which is full of enormously bloated crap...and since you listed Slashdot, I am assuming you do not RTFA, as most sites linked to are full o' bandwidth intensive crap.
If you have a cable contract, and break it, you will be liable for a fee as well. Same with cell phones, cable TV, car lease, etc...
Breaching a contract aside, my Verizon DSL cost 14.99 a month, with a 1 year commitment. No modem fee, no shipping fee, not an introductory rate. 768
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Come get humped in the land of milk and honey:
, 00.html#new
$1 NZ Dollar = $0.67 US Dollars
http://www.telecom.co.nz/chm/0,5123,205112-202570
Plan name Monthly charge Monthly allowance Max d/l* Max u/l Overage
Basic $29.95 200MB 256kbs 128kbs Yes
Go $39.95 1GB 2Mbs 128kbs No
Explorer $49.95 5GB 3.5Mbs 128kbs No
Adventure $59.95 10GB 3.5Mbs 128kbs No
Pro $79.95 10GB 3.5Mbs 512kbs Yes
Pro Advanced $99.95 20GB 3.5Mbs 512kbs Yes
Pro Ultra $149.95 40GB 3.5Mbs 512kbs Yes
Telecom.. slowing the pace of technical progress in New Zealand since.. forever! And these are the 'New to be released' pricings. At least what you see also applies to commerical customers.
Telecom, Ya Bastards.
Generally the really expensive broadband stories come from people that live in small towns...
Care to back that up? I live in rural northeastern Kansas, and I pay $29.95 each month for broadband cable Internet (no cable TV). No gimmics. No special rate for 6-months. And I know I'll be paying this same rate for the 12 months after I signed up.
Last October I moved from another smaller small town in the vicinity and paid the exact same with a different provider. Both providers are excellent. I currently get between 4-5 Mbps download, which is much much much more than what my parents got in the SF Bay Area from a phone/DSL company that rhymnes with 'hell'.
Don't ping my cheese with your bandwidth!
$15/mo.
I've had Verizon DSL for a couple years now. I called them a week ago and got them to switch me over to the $15/mo plan.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
*cough* *cough*
I AM the parent poster, as a matter of fact...
Those are not "introductory" rates. You need a 12-month contract, but it's still the perpetual rate, AFAIK.
As far as the "local phone requirements", I thought that much was safe to assume. You need a telephone line for DSL, just as you need a telephone line for dial-up. The story is about dial-up vs. DSL (not DSL vs. Cable) so I assumed everyone would be able to assume that much.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The vast majority of actual content is text based. Broadband does not help significantly in delivering this. Is Slashdot significantly faster on broadband, especially once the images are cached? I think not. I've used broadband, always on someone else's bill, it don't seem any better than dialup for what I normally use the internet for. I'm sure for certain things, like gaming it might be nice, though if Diablo II can work perfectly over dialup, I don't see why other games couldn't, although most don't, though that is bad programming, plain and simple.
You can say so all you want, but it won't make it true.
Look at the terms for Verizon's $15/mo plan, and tell me where it says the price will go up after a year.
There are other companies like DSLExtreme.com that service the Verizon/SBC/BellSouth customers (at least in Southern California) which will give you $15/mo internet access if your telco won't.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I think mine is missing some equal signs :-)
Table-ized A.I.
Yes, then there are those around Chicago,IL that are real tired of it (broadband) going down and staying down on holiday weekends when people want it, often slower access times for simple things like accessing email than dial-up (unless you're the 3am crowd), more spamm email than dial-up. In fact, I know people that "went back to dial-up" after having broadband-both DSL and Cable. Several of them run businesses (money is not the problem). Dial-up is just more dependable and easier to manage in this area.
John W....
Indeed, if I was going to be entirely legit, I could likely go back to dial-up. I'd rather by CDs than DRMed stuff from iTMS, and NetFilx doesn't require High-Speed internet, I did it for years on dial-up.
However, when it would save me only $10 a month compared to DSL... The cost factor, plus the fact that there are 3 + people wanting to be online all the time now, plus not needing a PC "dial-up" router, keeps me on DSL. Of course, again, if you don't want to be on-line all the time, then not needing a second phone line drastically increases the savings from $10 a month to $35 a month, which would then be worth it.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
Grow up and do your job correctly kid! Or don't "moderate" at all.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Benjamin Disraeli .
r aeli
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Benjamin_Dis
"Figures may or may not lie, but liars always figure." me
Matthew
Dude. Did you just post your phone number to slashdot? Enjoying all those prank calls over the weekend?