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Dial-Up Users "Don't Want Broadband"
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Jul 03, 2008 12:58 PM
from the get-spied-on-at-lower-speeds dept.
from the get-spied-on-at-lower-speeds dept.
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.)
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Nooo! (Score:5, Funny)
We must convert the dial-up heathens!
Send more broadband missionaries!
Re:Nooo! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Nooo! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.)
Parent
Re:Nooo! (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Nooo! (Score:4, Funny)
How do you keep Windows patched? Oh sorry forgot this was /. how do you download Linux?
Ah, not doing either of those? For God sake, stick with dial-up I can't take the extra spam!!!
Parent
Re:Nooo! (Score:4, Informative)
At least one neighborhood in Queens, NY just got broadband within the last year. I don't know where people get the idea that the whole country is wired. Much of the country doesn't even have cable. And most is too rural to get DSL or FIOS.
Parent
Re:Nooo! (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Nooo! (Score:4, Interesting)
Many rural areas still lack broadband access. My father lives in such an area where even the dialup is run out of a closet leased from the local funereal home. There is no cable television provider, and he is far outside the allowable distance from the CO for DSL.
Yeah, he's in the middle of nowhere in Utah, but then again a lot of the population lives in rural areas with similar constraints.
Parent
Re:Nooo! (Score:5, Interesting)
what makes you think that being out in buttfuck does not equal being in civilization ? Civilization does not equal 'living in a city'.
I've lived in many different places, some rural and some not, the thing I noticed is that it doesn't really matter whether you're in a rural area or not, the big deciding factor for a carrier to install broadband is COMPETITION.
As soon as they start losing their dial up customers to some yokel with a wifi hookup they make sure broadband becomes available pronto.
Parent
Re:Nooo! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Nooo! (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Parent
Re:Nooo! (Score:5, Funny)
I hope it stays that way. If it wasn't for the people on slow connections I'd never be able to frag anyone online in a FPS.
Parent
Re:Nooo! (Score:5, Insightful)
Fortunately for the spammers, those unpatched systems don't need much bandwidth to send lots of two line text-only spam.
Parent
Re:Nooo! (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, I have broadband, and it's nice for what i do. But do my parents need it?
My mom's on dialup (80 yrs old), my dad (77 yrs ols) doesn't even have a computer in his house (they got divorced the year I was married).
My friend Ralph (86 yrs old) doesn't have a computer, but he doesn't need one; he has hookers. And blackjack.
But he forgets the blackjack.
Parent
Re:Nooo! (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus they think they will lose their AOL homepage and email...
Parent
Re:Nooo! (Score:5, Funny)
Those poor fools... luckily I printed a copy of the AOL homepage, so I don't worry about such things.
Parent
Re:Nooo! (Score:5, Informative)
The US doesn't suck because people choose not to get broadband, it sucks because they can't get it even if they want it.
No, you almost certainly don't. Maybe you think you do, because you have cable or DSL, but those are too slow to count as broadband. The only real broadband in the US (not including business leased lines, of course) is Verizon's FIOS, and that's available in so few areas it might as well be mythical.
Parent
Re:Nooo! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
We must convert the dial-up heathens
Why should I change? My dialup connection works fine so long as noone picks up th# $% @#$#%)G$%$#^NO CARRIER
Parent
Pleeeeease keep them on dial up! (Score:5, Insightful)
Dialup just does not support botting, so it is better to leave them on dialup.
Parent
Re:Pleeeeease keep them on dial up! (Score:5, Informative)
They don't make very effective bots, but they still get botted.
I was checking my mother-in-law's computer because she said the internet wasn't working. I connected and twiddled around with settings a bit. At some point I opened up the connections status and I had to smile a bit as her uploads were something like 5MB and downloads were a few thousand k.
She never patched her system because it takes to long over dialup :) Even antivirus updates are painful.
The other cool thing is that she kept having to unplug the phone line because the computer would dial in whenever it needed a connection, and the bot apparently always needed a connection.
Parent
Odin84gk (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Re:Odin84gk (Score:5, Insightful)
Summary: "19 percent say nothing would persuade them to upgrade"
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...
Except the US doesn't get "right" prices since the (wide) territory has been split between the providers which have a de facto local monopoly and can set the prices as they see fit.
Broadband provider is X for $Z. If you aren't happy with that, unless you're in a metropolitan area, the alternative is a POTS modem. In Europe/Asia, in most locations you actually have a choice for at least ADSL2+ providers (up to roughly 22Mbps depending on how far you are from the local hub), and nowadays fibre with typically 50Mbps+ *for the same price* (in France you get *at least* 50Mbps with fibre for about 30 € per month, whis is about, what, $50, $55 ?).
There is a category of users that only use the network to send email. You can do that over a 2.4K modem. I've run a 5 person network over a 9.6K modem with a Linux dial on demand box back when...
Actually, I was part of the tech people building one of the first public ISP in Europe over a *64K* line. For about 9000 subscribers who opted to use the Internet facility (we already had Internet -- among others -- mail gateways for ages). And at the time it was plenty. In the early 90s I downloaded my Linux floppy images on that link (several times even, when you wrote 30 floppies, some were bound to be bad).
Anyway, You and I would have trouble with a modem link (my offsite backups would become very complicated for example), but if all you use is email and a few web pages ? Should work like a charm (maybe adblock would be handy nowadays though).
Oh and I used to check my mail with nothing but a VT100 and a modem. Get off my lawn (waves walker and falls over).
Parent
Re:Odin84gk (Score:4, Interesting)
There are exceptions for even this. My grandmother, before she passed away, was on $20/month dialup. Broadband in the area the last time I visited: $14/month for their cheapest package(512k).
She didn't want to change.
Parent
$12 a month versus $50 a month (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:$12 a month versus $50 a month (Score:5, Funny)
$50/month?
Sucker! I only pay $49.95.
Parent
Re:$12 a month versus $50 a month (Score:4, Insightful)
Yah but if they're like my parents they paid $20 a month for dialup and $20 a month for a second landline. Cellphones have pretty much negated the need for this, but some families may want to keep their landline unlocked, and in that case broadband isn't that much more expensive.
Parent
Frankly, they are smarter than most of us (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Parent
Grandma Speed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Grandma Speed (Score:5, Insightful)
Your grandmother is a wise woman who has better things to worry about.
Cheers
Parent
Re:Grandma Speed (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Grandma Speed (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Parent
Majority (Score:4, Insightful)
Majority my ass, when did 1/5th become a majority.
Quite the misleading headline.
Dialup is "good enough" if you're not an addict. (Score:4, Interesting)
Dialup was good enough back in the day. Couldn't -- and still can't -- beat $4.95/mo when 90% of all you needed to do is check your email once a day, which pretty much describes the internet habits of my parents. If they needed anything bandwidth intensive, they'd usually just take care of it at work.
I think the only reason my parents switched to broadband was because I would spend hours tying up the phoneline when I was IMing my friends.
Costs not worth it to some people (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Costs not worth it to some people (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
My father said the same thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
...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?
If they are being sold on speed... (Score:5, Insightful)
... 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.
They have never even used high-speed (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:They have never even used high-speed (Score:5, Funny)
That's silly. Sure, you need to walk a mile to turn the page, but then you're already there and the rest of the experience is the same.
Dial-up -vs- high-speed is like reading a book with only one word printed on each page -vs- reading a porno mag with embedded videos on each page.
Parent
I'm one of those (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been sticking with dial-up service because high speed Internet's too much money for me. It's an added monthly fee that I just don't need. I can make do with dial-up. Turn off graphics and Flash and most web pages load just fine on a 56K dial-up connection. I just download patches for my Mac while I'm at work. I don't have a cell phone or cable TV either. I think I was just raised frugally.
Frankly, I'd be OK with a lower speed connection (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Some people just get set in their ways (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the same phenomenon that leaves me shaking my head every time they interview some laid-off Detroit autoworker who says something like "This is what I've done my whole life. What am I going to do now?" The obvious questions would be "Good Lord man, you didn't see this coming?" and "Why didn't you get some training or find a field with a brighter future in the last few decades?" Sometimes you just get used to doing something one way, and are lethargic about changing.
You CAN teach an old dog new tricks, you just have to kick him in the ass sometimes to get him out of his rut.
My 1200bps modem works just fine for me (Score:5, Funny)
BTW, first post!
In a related story, most users don't worry about (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
Kinda OT: I guess none of them can ever use linux (Score:4, Interesting)
Linux suppot for dialup is next to nil. Yes it's because of those winmodems, but you'd think a couple of the common chipsets would be reverse engineered or something could be done like ndiswrapper.
I mention this cause I have a friend who got a machine with vista and it runs fairly slow, I was going to set him up with linux, but realized he uses a winmodem for dialup. So that blew that idea.
Re:Some people don't have a choice (Score:5, Funny)
I live in a rural aria
I'm guessing you're an Opera user.
Parent
Re:Need (Score:5, Informative)
If we could dump all the extra garbage on most webpages, we could conserve a lot of bandwidth as it is.
Edit -> Preferences -> Content
Untick load images automatically.
Untick enable Javascript.
Untick enable Java.
Edit -> Preferences -> Applications
Remove any you don't like.
HTH
Parent
Re:Nostalgia (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent