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TiVo Says It Will Discontinue Support For Dial-up Service Later This Month (betanews.com)
BrianFagioli writes: Surprisingly, TiVo still offered dial-up access to some of its users, allowing them to download program guide information. Sadly, this week, the company started alerting those users that it will be discontinuing dial-up connectivity later this month -- the end of an era. TiVo sent the following email message Tuesday evening. "TiVo will be discontinuing our dial-up service on September 30, 2018. According to our records you may still have one or more TiVo devices connecting to the TiVo Service via dial-up. Your TiVo box will still be able to receive program guide data from the TiVo service via dial-up modem until September 30, 2018. Following September 30, 2018, your current subscription plan will remain active even if you are not using the TiVo Service. If you would like to continue using the TiVo Service, we have outlined several options for you below." Comically, the company suggests two alternatives -- use Ethernet or buy a Wi-Fi adapter. Look, while those are technically accurate options, if someone is still using dial-up connectivity with their TiVo in 2018, they probably don't have broadband access.
I used to have a router with a dialup "backup" line for if the main line goes down. Windows even supports creating a "hotspot" to share an existing connection which would presumably include sharing a modem. Granted, you would need a dialup account but the one nice thing about dialup is that the ISP could literally be on the other side of the world and it should still work.
Tivo is probably assuming that even the people using the dialup option, most of them have some sort of internet whether it be satellite, cellular, or something else.
There are quite a few BBSs that run over the internet, like ones based on WWIV which are run for nostalgic purposes. They probably still have dial up support. If your looking to avoid the internet, another option is NeighborNet where you run ethernet cables to your neighbors or bridge your wifi networks and set up your own community network. You could have a chain of such networks involving many people if you can get many to participate. Configure routers to route the packets around between the subnets. If you want to get fancy, you can even run your own BGP server!