Is Dialup Dead?

It's a service that allows connectivity to the internet through a telephone line.

By connecting the phone line to the modem in your computer and inserting the other end into the phone jack, and configuring the computer to dial a specific number provided by your internet provider service you're able to access the internet on your computer.

To get a dial up internet service you must definitely have a computer and even more important a modem.

Wow, haven't heard that word for like 5 years at least. Good old memories

No sh*t, Eduard!

Last week, I actually heard someone mention "NetZero".

OMG.. are they still around?

Do they even make laptops/notebooks with built in modems and the phone connector thingie anymore?

Dial up is not dead. There are rural areas where dial up is the only solution to get internet. Dial up now though is a very small percentage of market share vs what it was 10 years ago. At it's peak, aol had over 34 million members on dial up, now it has 3 million. Part of the new internet initiative is to get broadband available to 99 percent of Americans through either mobile or landline. That will probably be realized within the next 5 years or so.

Hmmmmm- so I guess my mockery of all of the "Is article marketing dead?" was not well played.

But thanks for your replys folks- I didn't realize there were still 3 million people using dial up. That's sad, sad sad.

I live in the country with no broadband. First I tried HughesNet. They were garbage so I quit them. Then I tried Earthlink. Served my purpose for awhile, but very slow.

Then I got a Droid X and tethered it to my computer and it works better than dialup but not as well as broadband. I go into town to the library or Starbucks with my laptop and their Wifi to do any heavy uploading or downloading.

Man I remember the good old days of dialup- waiting 5 minutes for a website to load.

If I had to do that now, my brain would explode.

But I guess if you don't know any better, it wouldn't matter.

But bottom line- I suppose dialup isnt dead

I'm paying 9 bucks a month for a dial up account for when my main connection goes down. But since there are hotspots popping up in my town, the need is not really there anymore, as far as i'm concerned.

But in the town I live,(rural) there are alot of seniors who still have dial up since it's $9-10 bucks a month and DSL service is close to $60 a month. These are the people who don't really get out to use the library or hotspots due to lack of mobility or transportation. Having the fixed income keeps them in dial up.

I use it on my travels overseas it works.

I don't think dial-up is dead so much as it's in a permanent vegetative state.

My broadband provider offers dial-up back up that I've used on a couple of occasions.

Just last spring power storm took out my broadband. While dial-up was verrrrrry slooooow I was able to check email, update my clients and handle a few banking transactions. Dial-up is not preferred but it still has its place.

Remember those sounds your modem would make when dialing in? Now it's stuck in my head.

I remember my roommate asking me if I'm going to need the phone for the next hour because he was going online. Then he got this new thing called an ISDN line and I was amazed at our new fast internet speeds.

That is the one thing that I remember also is the noise when it was connecting.

I still keep a dialup account as a backup. I think I maybe use it once a year when cable goes out.

Now here's a real question for you: does anyone still use a 300baud modem to connect to their dial up connections? I still remember when those were state of the art and we could laugh at people who were connecting at 100baud...

Eric

I actually thought it's dead like Encarta and the AOL CD.

Anyway I use 3G as backup.

Perhaps somewhere in Pakistan or countries like that...

Good times. I remember British Telecom being the ONLY phone provider around back in the late 90's. They charged you up the arse for connecting to dial up internet numbers. I think I was paying at least 30p a minute to be on the net! Not good since I was SEVERELY addicted. Most of my money went on paying phone bills.

I moved to the states and I was a netzero customer back in about 2000. Used to download MP3's...you know the ones that were touted as CD equivalent at 128 bitrate lol. They banned me for excessive use. I was getting 2.5 kbps download rate. Now we're talking about MAYBE one album if left overnight, about 40mb total. Their service was supposed to be unlimited though. Thats always annoyed me when I see their name anywhere

NO NO I will never go there again.

It been forever since we heard of Dialup. It used to take forever to go online I remember paying per hour to connect lol.

I don't have a landline, using DSL is practically cheaper lol

Dialup is incredibly slow. 64k i believe. You're better off with satellite internet like Hughesnet. This is high speed internet via satellite.

Lol, folks still use dial up???

I know a man who has dialup simply because he's cheap, not that he cant get high speed. I thought dialup was dead too. I live in a rural area on a farm and everyone around me has DSL. We'd like to move and I've made it clear that I will not move to any place that does not have high speed.

Sarcasm noted

But seriously...

From 1995 to 2003, I almost EXCLUSIVELY worked on a dial up Internet
connection.

For 'security' and backup, I still renew my account - and last week,
it came in handy. Underground rail construction in my city is tearing
up a lot of infrastructure - and someone dug up the broadband cables!

72 hours is how long it took to restore the connectivity - and during
that time, dial up is all I had access to.

It CRAWLED.

But I could get email, and do a few things online.

What was amazing is:

* how used we can get to high speed, to the point the 'default'
of several years becomes "intolerable" and "frustrating"!

* how evolved the Web has grown, that the sites I use daily
were not usable AT ALL on dial-up!

Considering that there's a fair share of prospects forced to use dial
up (or similarly slow or low speed) access to the Web, it's a real
worry about how usable our sales websites are to this audience - and
how an emphasis on video and multi-media selling may be excluding
an audience that could be profitable to your business.

Lessons and food for thought from my recent experience.

Oh, and a couple of days after they fixed our cables, the diggers
cut them again at another spot - leaving dial up access my lifeline
for another day, till things were fixed (guess the broadband folks
gained from the experience, they were faster in restoring service!)

All success
Dr.Mani

Hey Justin,

Thanks for bring back old memories! A lot of us seem to remember the good ol' dial-up.
It seems just like yesterday that we were waiting nearly 60 seconds for 1 page to load.

Well its a good thing it's in the past! However there are still a few people that use it, and I know of many people in other countries that rely on it as their main source.

That's a scary thought.

My mom still uses dial-up because she lives out in the country and can't get high-speed at all. I love visiting my mom, but I could never stay out there too long, because the slow speed just drives me crazy. I did grow up with dial-up and it frustrated me to no end. I'm so happy for my DSL now.

Dial-up connection is almost extinct nowadays

I partner with an internet service provider (was technical support there and systems administrator back in high school). Their name is Xecu.Net and yes they still offer dial up however DSL is much higher market share for them

I was going to answer this question yesterday but after looking at the posters profile I thought to myself "No this guy can'y be serious"

I knew there was an angle I just didn't know what it was so I just left it :-)

I only just got off dialup about a year and a half ago. I lived in a new housing estate and broadband internet wasnt available. We tried wireless but that was worse. Before moving I was on 128k ISDN service which sucked.

My old computer had an internal 64k modem, running over a single phone line that used to pull about 32k bandwidth (flat out on a good day)

Believe it or not, I was on dialup from 1997 - 2010 and mustve downloaded about 4,000 mp3's in that time.

One song used to take about 30 minutes.

This suddenly made me remember the sound that the modem makes when you're trying to connect to the Internet. Nostalgic. I don't know if it's "dead." I bet there are still a few that use it, but we're mostly in the broadband, or DSL group now; in the age where a lot of people want results as soon as possible.

It's very easy to forget that even in America, there are areas in which dial up is still used.

As a website owner, it's a "tough" compromise between loading speed and design when adding new images and graphics. I look at that dial up loading time and think...I'm glad I'm not on dial up!

Dial-up used to be a pain in ass when downloading wallpapers of my favorite celebrities. Still I had over 5K of them.. A feat much appreciated by my college mates..

I still remember the dial up tone when signing on to America Online...lol

LOL! Those were fun days, waiting for pages to load and someone was always complaining about the phone.

What is dial-up

Now I remember my manual 9600 BAUD modem connected to my Apple IIe as I would get the latest and greatest stuff late at night connecting to ASCII Express sites...*sigh* Memories!

Man this is awesome- actually bringing back a lot more stories of dial up than I ever thought I'd remember.

The 2 main things I remember are

1) Trying to get into Amazon.com, then walking away for a few minutes so it'd have time to load.

2) Playing Diablo on Battle.net over dialup.... my family and friends could NEVER get ahold of us over the phone (since it was before everyone had mobile)

Good times!

My MIL lives in Alabama and had dial up until the end of 2012 when she got a Verizon MiFi card. There is no high speed internet option for her unless she uses a satellite. LOTS of rural areas (even in the US) still rely on dial up as the main internet access.

I am sure in some countries, many internet users are connection to the net using dial up connections. Some users still don't have ADSL internet.

Wow .... dialup has been dead in my world for a long time, we're lucky in the UK since broadband is available in many places. I'd go nuts if I had to go back to using a modem, sympathy for anybody who has to deal with slow intenet.

I was speaking to a random person the other day and I was telling him some websites to visit and some services to try online (as a solution to something he was looking for), and the services I told him are 'heavy' usage (what isn't these days) and require broadband. Obviously that's a given these days that if someone has internet, they have broadband (or so I thought). Long story short, it turned out he still has dial-up at home and wasn't fully aware of what broadband is, nor is he interested in spending 'extra' money to get broadband. I explained to him why he needs broadband to take advantage of the things I just told him about, gave him a quick rundown on how it works and rough costs, and went on my way.

I was kind of shocked to say the least, as I really thought dial-up was out of the equation now, but apparently it is not!

And this is in NYC, not a "rural" area.

lmao dialup...... If I lived where the only option was dialup, I would move... period... The internet just isn't the same when you gotta wait 30 seconds for 1 page to load, or 30 minutes to download a 15MB internet marketing file.. No skype... No watching leaked IM video tutorials that are 50-100MB... damn, that would suck!

If you are on dialup, move.