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Dial-Up Users "Don't Want Broadband"
Barence writes "The majority of dial-up Internet users say they don't want to upgrade their connection to broadband, according to a new study in the US. The Pew Internet & American Life research found that 62% of dial-up users had no interest in upgrading to a high-speed connection." (CNN is carrying the AP's story on the study, too.)
In other news, 81% of Americans on Dial-up would like to switch to high speed internet if the price was right...
Nothing to see here... Move along...
These people are probably your mothers and fathers who aren't particularly into computers. If they're just checking e-mail and maybe a little web surfing on a Pentium II with 128MB of memory, it's hard to argue that they should pay $50 a month for broadband.
I hated paying $50 a month for cable internet even though I used the hell out of it. It just doesn't seem like a reasonable price.
Majority my ass, when did 1/5th become a majority.
Quite the misleading headline.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
I can see where people look at the $10/month they pay for dialup ($120 a year) and compare it to the cost of broadband; cable internet in my area is at least $45/month ($540 a year, or add $10/month on top if you don't have cable TV service!) so they would pay an extra $420 a year to have the same access, but faster.. Come to think of it, thats kind of depressing that I pay that much a year for internet! If I was living on a low fixed income, cable and internet would be among the lowest priorities. Some of you will laugh at me, and call me a phony geek, but have you ever gone a week eating only 1 cup of nooldes a day because you couldn't afford to eat? I have, it changes your priorities pretty quickly!
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
...until one of his kids started sending videos of his grandchildren to him, along with the high MP pictures. Add in the gallery (Menalto's Gallery) that I run that hosts lots of family pictures. He also likes to view videos from humoron and other sites of that nature, and dialup just wasn't working for him.
I tried to convince him for at least a couple years that he should get cable or DSL, but he refused to because he either didn't want to pay the up-front costs, or he hated the company (or a combination). He finally got a taste of higher-than-dialup speed at a friends house, bit the bullet, and finally signed up for himself.
Many of these people are probably in the same boat. They just simply don't know what they are missing out on, and that's fine. That means they're either out in their community, or watching TV, etc. I just have a feeling that many of these folks would actually put a higher speed connection to use if they were introduced to all the stuff they could be using it for.
I know for a fact that one of the driving features for my father getting his DSL was that he was able to talk to my deployed brother via the internet far more cheaply than phone calls were. I wonder how many of that 62% have deployed children/family members that they'd like to be able to talk to more often?
bork bork bork!
Your grandmother is a wise woman who has better things to worry about.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
... I'm not too surprised.
The most important difference, as far as I'm concerned is not in speed, but in the always-on nature of the connection.
For a long time my (80-something) parents were quite happy with dial-up. And they basically didn't use the Net. To access the Internet they had to run a phone extension lead across the room. They explained they didn't use the Internet much, and I simply said, "and you wouldn't use electricity much if every time you needed to turn on a light you had to go out to the garage, start up a generator and then run a cable in through the window".
In the end they simply decided that they didn't want to be left behind by the times. They got wireless, I set them up with a Mac (yes, I know but the Dock is a great thing it you only ever need 4 applications) and they never looked back. They're Skyping, Googling, the works.
Exactly how you sell the way that the online experience changes when you are always on is slightly problematic, but it's key. People liek my parents really didn't care if the Web page opened twice as fast.
The few dial-up users I knew a few years ago didn't realize how big the difference was. They assumed that if it took 2 minutes to get a page on dial-up, it would be one minute or 30 seconds on high-speed internet. They equated high-speed internet to upgrading a computer. It's prettier and faster, but it is really the same thing. And they were patient.
That changed when they saw my laptop. Sometimes I would click a link and the page would load and they didn't even register that it happened. dial-up -vs- high-speed is like reading a book through a telescope a mile away -vs- reading it up close. And once you go there you can never go back. So I suspect most of those dial-up users who are left just have never seen the alternative.
Frankly, I'd be OK with a lower speed connection, for a lower price, too. Say, 768kbps down for $15 a month would work just fine for me at home. Instead I pay $45 a month for 6mbps that I don't really need.
i really do not get this whole idea that the US sucks because of lack of broad band adaptation. I mean, I have broadband, and it's nice for what i do. But do my parents need it? no dialup would be fine for them. Do my sisters need it? no. You can certainly browse the web and send/recieve email on dialup, so I really don't get this obsession over it. (by obsession i mean I see these articles frequently on /. for some reason.)
have them visit www.ford.com, or any other automotive retailer's website.
the flash alone will suck down megs of data on something that is barely viewable with broad band is becoming the normal.
a lot of car sites have so much flash you would think the police would catch on and arrest the serial flashers.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
More than even the speed most of the time what I most appreciate about broadband is its always on nature. For a long time with dial-up I actually had 2 phone lines, one for voice and one for data. Even so, connecting the modem took time of not already on-line for an impulse checking out of a web-page. Now I just open my browser whenever.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Most of my (non tech-savvy) friends don't care if their machine is botted, so long as it plays GTA x okay. I have to explain (usually one-on-one) why they're being harmed, even if they never see a slowdown on their desktop or have to deal with law enforcement. I have to explain why letting spambots run on their boxes is bad, even if they never check their own e-mail (and thus never see spam).
Good luck explaining to Grandma and Grandpa why they should pony up an extra thirty-odd dollars per month or more just to get their e-mail a little faster and with one or two less mouse clicks. Incidentally, has anybody here considered that people who are satisfied with dialup are doing the rest of us a favor? Likely as not, they're not sophisticated users and are the ones most likely to be running infected systems - best to relegate them to the list of "connects occasionally for limited uses". My greatest nightmare is already coming true - millions of desktops running Windows with inadequate protection persistently connected to the internet via a high-speed connection.
because the high speed net isn't really doing anything for the majority of people except separating them from their money.
Look, my grand parents and my parents to a similar degree are from a more responsible generation. They didn't burden themselves down with so many monthlies that marketing gurus have dreamed up to separate us from our money. I can't count the number of people I know who scrape by but refuse to acknowledge how they drain their income relentlessly through monthlies. Its only $1 dollar a day! Its only 1.49 a day! Its just $100 a month.
Sheesh. These same people wonder why I can drive and own a new car when I want it. They don't understand the magic of being able to buy something I want when I want it for CASH. I don't look at each month as a routine of $30 here, $50 there, and $100 there, and having to do with X minus a whole lot of Ys.
For the most part with current offerings all high speed internet does is satisfy our impatience. There really isn't that much different to the net for many of us that wasn't there a few years ago. A lot people justify it by "well I might want to do X" and such. Words to make a marketer's ears perk and for them salivate over.
Hell if anything this survey tells me there are many Americans with a real life. Call them hicks, backwards trolls, whatever, I know many do just so they can justify their spending money like it comes from trees. It certainly makes it easier to pass these people off as ignorant but at the end of day who is happier?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Dialup just does not support botting, so it is better to leave them on dialup.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
To this day, about the only thing that crushes dialup are DVD downloads, and some dev apps and games that have become as big as DVDs.
YouTube? Anything with flash/java/shockwave (back in the day)/lots of pictures/etc? How about MySpace profiles, facebook profiles, ... the list goes on. Heck, gMail was so much faster than Hotmail on dialup, but even gMail took a minute or two to load up-front.
I remember downloading the newest version of Netscape Navigator on dial-up ages ago... it took hours and god forbid anyone messed with the phone because the download wouldn't resume back then. (Download managers existed, sure, but it took so long to download any kind of software that it wasn't worth the time and trouble to find one and download it. Ah, the irony.)
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
It's because they don't watch porn. If they watched porn, they'd switch to broadband in an instant.
But why does that bother you? Who cares if someone has a slow connection, or even no connection? The world got along just fine (actually, from evidence, a lot better) without everyone having an instant connection to everyone else.
And get off my lawn!
Brett
Not to mention software patches! How many dial-up users are going to install XP SP3?
Fortunately for the spammers, those unpatched systems don't need much bandwidth to send lots of two line text-only spam.
Life is short: void the warranty.
Why, old people porn, of course. :-P
But, in all seriousness, start sending them daily links to videos or photo albums of the youngest of grandchildren, and they'll suddenly discover why they might care to have faster speeds.
I will go out on a limb and say that at least some grandparents have switched for broadband for exactly that reason. "Mac: $900. Broadband connection: $50. Video conferencing story time with the grand kids: fucking priceless".
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Blowjobs. Beer. Breasts (real ones, mind you, not those digital ones). Really good food. Vacations without the internet. Fast cars. Easy women.
You could actually partake in some of human culture as well.
His grandmother figured it out. :-P
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I have dial-up, even though the local telco offers DSL. I'm not switching. I won't do any more business with the local telco than I must (basic land-line service). Dial-up used to be OK, typical dial-up. By coincidence, then the local telco started offering DSL, the dial-up started having major problems. The problems have continued for over a year. It takes, on average about 10 minutes to get a connection to the dial-up ISP, the telco wire-taps the line and sabotages the connection to the ISP. I expect to take 20 minutes to an hour to get a reliable connection. Downloading patches is difficult. In addition, the terms and conditions of the DSL offering (which I actually read) are that the telco still gets paid even when they provide no service at all. I've talked to the telco, the Pennsylvania Attorney General and the BBB. Nothing has helped so far. I see no reason to switch. As the telco successfully wiretaps my phone connection and sabotages my current service, and the DSL t&c that insist on being paid despite providing no service, then it is reasonable to expect that the telco will provide as close to no service as possible. Thus there is no inducement to switch to faux-broadband.
Plus they think they will lose their AOL homepage and email...
Try downloading a service pack over dial-up, and then tell me that dial-up users aren't likely to have more unpatched flaws in their system.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
People do want health care, they just don't want to pay for it until they get sick at which case they go to the emergency room and we end up paying for them anyway. Saying that there are people who actually prefer not being able to go to a doctor is ridiculous.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
You forgot to list people wanting to:
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
My uncle fell into this category. For years he would happily log into his ISP, check his stocks, read emails, the usual operations. Time after time, I explained that for just about the same price he could have a MUCH faster Internet. He would constantly reply with "it's ok, I'm patient and this works." Usually, I would retort this by saying that his patients was admirable and a good thing, but simply not necessary.
Until one day he moved to a new community which had all the houses pre-setup with cable modems.
In fact, at the new community, broadband was cheaper since it was just "part of the deal."
Since then, I haven't heard the end of "how much faster his computer is now." He absolutely loves it and says he will never go back to dial-up.
Realistically, I think most broadband holdouts fit into this description. Hesitant to change, content and generally patient with the shortcoming they have. But if they had the opportunity to try broadband for an extended period of time, I think most reasonable people would agree it's just better.
What this basically means is that 62% of dial up users are ignorant. They aren't mentally ill, stupid, or dumb asses, they're just uneducated and don't understand what "broadband" really is. Some of the reasons they think they don't want broadband (I use the term think because any educated persons should want something faster than dial up) are as follows: 1: They're paying somewhere along the lines of 10-20 dollars a month for dial up and see no reason they should pay more for Internet access 2: Broadband confuses them. They've used dial up forever and don't understand any other way to access the Internet. 3: A complete lack of knowledge of bandwidth, transfer rates, or data size. The biggest problem is that most of them really don't understand just how much faster and more convenient it is. They don't necessarily need 10 Mbps downstream, especially if they're only browsing web sites and sending/receiving e-mails, but 56 Kbps (and you don't even get that, depending on the condition some people can't connect any faster than about 28 Kbps) is not enough for today's web and even e-mails. This people that "think" they don't want broadband actually do want it, but they don't need any more than about 256 Kbps up/down. That would be perfect for them, it's enough bandwidth to quickly send and receive pictures in e-mails and even the occasional video clip (not streaming of course). And more than enough to browse most any well put together web site. I thought I should mention this as well; when I say 62% of dial up users are ignorant, I don't mean that literally. I know for a fact that some of them are actually very educated people, geeks even, but they actually don't need more than dial up because they most likely don't browse the web at all, or very very seldom. It kind of seams odd that a geek wouldn't care about broadband, but it's not far fetched to say that they exist and really just don't care. The people I'm talking about are the typical computer user that doesn't even understand what a web browser is, and can only use a computer because they have certain routines burned into their brain, but if an unfamiliar window comes out of no where, they'll have no idea what it is, how to get rid of it, or where it came from...those types of users are very likely to be the majority of that 62%.
Interesting fallacy.
I think it's poisoning the well, but I can't be sure.
If I believe we should have nationalized health care like a civilized country, suddenly I am one of 'them' regardless of the merits of the conversation.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Just because you consider 3 inches "long" doesn't make it so. I'm glad you don't listen to the FCC. I'm happy for you, really. But the vast majority of people who use the Internet realize that 512Kbps isn't really broadband. A half megabit, while faster than dialup, and faster than other options you have, is still not "broadband". Broadband shouldn't be defined by the fastest thing available to a person, it should be defined as a baseline that everyone can agree on. The FCC's number is the closest thing to that that we have.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
what makes you think people still stuck in the dialup days run software updates? Most of them probably don't know their computer account's password.
I ran into one of those just yesterday. Has a five year old computer and has never ran updates. Went to do so and he had no idea his account had a password on it. So now we get to fight that later.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Actually, loss of their email address IS a big factor for people upgrading from dialup. They don't realize what the benefits are, but can very easily recognize the chaos that's going to cause.
What we need is a "universal portability" thing for email like we have for telephone numbers. (but I call it GMail)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Background downloading on a modem will make it practically unusable, with multi-second latency. And it'll still take days or weeks to finish.