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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.
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.
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.
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.
Plus they think they will lose their AOL homepage and email...
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