Who still uses dial up internet?

Those people will still have landlines. If they live so far in the boonies they might have to dial long distance to connect. Why do computers even still come dial up modems?

Two-Thirds of Americans on Broadband - US Broadband Growth Slows - August 2010 Bandwidth Report

Summary: While two-thirds of adult Americans now use broadband, the spread of broadband in the US has slowed dramatically over the past year. African-Americans are the major exception with 22% year-over-year growth.

Two-thirds of adult Americans (66%) use a high speed Internet connection at home, according to a recent survey by PEW Internet. US broadband penetration is up only 3 percentage points over the same time a year ago however, when broadband penetration stood at 63% in April 2009. While most demographic groups showed slow growth, African-Americans were a major exception.


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US in 15th Place in Broadband Penetration Worldwide

The US remained in 15th place overall in broadband penetration per 100 inhabitants (see Figure 1). US broadband penetration was 26.4 percent (broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants) as of December 2009, according the a December 2009 survey by the OECD.

The Netherlands and Denmark virtually tied for the top spot at 37.1% penetration, while Switzerland jumped ahead of Norway to 35.6% penetration since the last survey in Q2 2009. Korea (33.5%), Iceland (32.8%), Sweden (32.4%), Luxembourg (31.9%), France (30.4%), and Germany (30.3%) rounded out the top 10 countries in broadband penetration rankings worldwide.


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spend around 60 dollars a month for satellite Internet and it's not that much faster than dial up. I go to the library (8 miles one way) to download my Mike Malloy radio shows.

Do you dial a local number? Even some places in highly populated areas can't get DSL

dial a local number for dial up. Cost 9 dollars a month for dial up, but it's slower than crap. Right now my speed is 21.6 Kbps which is damn good for this time of day. Usually it's around 16 Kbps. The phone company has told me I am about to the end of their line, and that is why it's so slow. I mentioned when do they ever plan to put in high fiber optics, and he laughed. He said the phone company was waiting for the government to foot the bill for high fiber optics and it will be a long time before that ever happens.

While I was having my phone lines worked on, I had to interact with the phone company engineer for this part of the county. I asked him about when DSL would be available at my farm and he laughed at me. He said probably never since there was little demand and the technology was not good enough.

I had already put my name on a list requesting DSL, but I was highly discouraged. Only six months later I got a call from the phone company asking if I still wanted DSL - it took me about a nanosecond to say "YES!" Turns out that the phone company had already been running the fiber optic lines up our road, but the local engineer knew nothing about it.

The more people in an area that request the service, the sooner the companies will make the effort to run the lines capable of carrying it. So sign up and encourage your neighbors to sign up on the waiting list

I may have to go back to dial up at some point, since it is quite a bit cheaper. I would hate to see that option go away.

Maine has a state-wide program where they issue a laptop to every middle-school student, to use at school and take home. The same initiative provides free dial-up, provided only there's already a phone line at home. It's made e-mail-every-parent just about a reality.

I'm guessing at least a third of households use the dial-up. I know we get complaints about teachers making web-thingies that are too large to load readily over dial-up.

What if they lack both a landline and broadband?

since the cable stops after our house. so i guess we lucked out. currently my husbands work pays for it because bob has to do his "e-time" online and use his work issued laptop to do stuff for work. we don't have a landline so we can't do dial up. we never even ran lines for it when we put our house in.

my dad had dial up because he didn't have access to broadband and satellite was too expensive. my sister has the satellite because she doesn't have access to broadband and she needs something more than the dial up for her job. she says it isn't much faster than dial up.

at our school in the middle school many of the teachers said email would be easier. sometimes emily has to access the internet to acquire something for a class. i asked her what kids who don't have access to the internet do when they need to get stuff for school from there. i assume they probably use the library that has a bunch of computers there. i had an interesting conversation with the librarian at the school during open house and she talked about how they are addressing the internet in searching for facts for reports and things. they are having them look up stuff in the library as we would have done before the internet and working their way up to the internet.

it's easy to forget not everyone has broadband. and not everyone has the internet even with dial up. i forget that sometimes. i admit it. as long as kids without the internet don't get left behind because they don't have access to it. i like the idea of the school providing laptops and internet. i am sure some would flip out at that idea but our kids need every advantage. if you are going to use the internet to issue homework and contact with parents then all kids need that same access.

I used to get excited cause i would see someone advertising a web address.... Now you cant live if you dont have broadband... how quickly times change.

Not many puters come with 56k modems anymore.

I use applications daily in my work that require me to connect to equipment through a dial up modem or a 9 pin serial com port. This is not uncommon. Your assumption is that the only use of a PC is to connect to the internet.

At home I am forced to use dial up as there is no high speed at an economical rate. In my area the only service available is satellite link such as Hughes. The fee to get the minimum speed DSL from the phone company is $100.00. The DSL if available is >$20.00 per month. And then the satellite service is iffy in bad weather.

There are a few communities outside of the city limits that have DSL provided by the phone company. All of them receive dial tone from remote systems that are fed by fiber optics, the DSL rides on the same fiber routes to be distributed like dial tone over copper lines.

It is not cost effective for phone companies or cable companies to serve rural customers. The only reason we have dial tone is because or actions taken by FDR's administration. The same is true for electric power.

Britains have something like 90+% coverage. Because we don't have the will to invest in broadband coverage we will sink into a 3rd world country. Oh and cell phone service sucks in rural areas if you get off of major routes. The only dependable cell service for us is ATT and that is for phone service only- forget about internet, 3G and 4G.

I use a MacBook and have to use a USB dial up modem. I too go to the library to download big files. Fortunately I work across the street from the library. I can't access it from my building but get good connectivity from my car.

many people have ditched expensive broadband for cheap dial-up. It's all a matter of what you have the most of, time or money, and for unemployed folks who still need the Internet for job searching, dial-up is a no-brainer.

Even if they can afford it

Really?

A lot of people simply can't afford broadband. Why do you have to dump on them?

I don't any more, and once the intro rate for broadband goes away i might have to go back to that

anything other than dial-up in our neighborhood, we don't have DISH teevee.

My ISP is a local company and I do not pay long distance charges to connect to the internet.

My only other option would be satellite, but it costs way more than I'm willing to pay.

I get by.

sw

and they couldn't get their signal here. Satellite is too expensive. We don't pay long distance for the dialup.

The only thing I'd like to see is videos, but I have lived without them so far. I admit to being in awe of seeing the internet delivered via somthing other than dialup - it is so fast. But I get everything I need via the only thing available here (dialup), just not what I want. That is okay with me. I live in a rural area on purpose, and this is just a small inconvenience compared to experiences I get by living here.

On the days when dialup crawls or I get dropped repeatedly, I remind myself that I do have a life outside the internet, and I head out the door. So everything balances out in a way by using dialup.

However, if I ever have a different option out here, I'm taking it. My time on the internet could be cut to 1/3 if I wasn't always "waiting" for things I want to quickly read to load.

As far as the "waiting" goes, I always have a book at hand when I'm online. So I read my book while I wait for stuff to load - multitasking! :D

sw

I can't get anything thanks to digital transmission. A lot of damn good it did for us to buy those digital boxes. We're basically forced to buy DISH or DIRECTV if we are to watch any TV at all. Right now I have DISH and about every two years I'll switch back to DIRECTV or DISH when their prices start getting ridiculous.

My neighbor across the road has satellite Internet and it's a little faster than dial up. But, 60 dollars a month to have speeds just a little faster than dial up, I don't think so! I can't believe in the year 2010 that this country still hasn't brought high speed to rural areas.

That's the last money I'll ever spend for TV.

I have a huge rooftop antenna that used to bring in 5-6 stations. After the digital switch, I got nothing. I refuse to be roped into paying for DISH or DIRECTV, TV just isn't that important to me.

As long as my local public library survives, I'm good. :)

sw

I've seen a lot of other rural folk somewhat close to where I live (within say 50 miles) saying that their satellite internet isn't all that much better than dialup, and that has made me hesitate to pay out big bucks (install, a contract, etc) for little better than what I already have.

I have netzero, at 6.95/month, and while it sure has issues, I figure I am not overpaying for what I do get:)

True that the nearest neighbor is a few miles away, but I can pull in a couple of digital channels. We do have cell phone coverage - somewhat reliably on a corner of our deck, but that sucks in the winter.

Sometimes I read a book too - and I moved my computer to a spot right by my open kitchen, so I bake or put together a stew while I wait for loading, esp. in the winter when the snow is deep. Thinking of it as "multitasking" might make me less frustrated:)

No other choice here, neighbors are trying to get something going, but just not enough of us out here to make it profitable for the companie I guess. It works for me and only problem is when the kids come home and complain how slow it is. I guess I am used to it. One of them brings a satelite connector to use when they have to work from here. I would love one, but don't want to spend the money on it. And when I got my newest computer I had to pay to put a dial up modem in it. So guess they are not the norm now on computer.

"If they live so far in the boonies they might have to dial long distance to connect."
Hardly. Local calling areas are pretty large. With about couple thousand phone numbers one can achieve near universal local coverage across the entire US.

Even though faxing is available on line some people use their computer as a fax machine.

:evilgrin:

I have the forest, the deer, the squirrels and the dial-up. Life is so hard here.

nothing but the sounds of birdsong and the wind through the treetops outside my windows.

Electronic distractions are not high on my list of priorities. :)

sw

...catch me if you can.

And they live in a sort-of in-the-way place. It's very frustrating when I'm out there for my stints of mom-sitting and I can't get reliable, usable internet connections. Fifty years behind the times and that's the way they like it.