SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world
on 12 Aug 2025 13:17
nextcollapse
Great, so those living in ultra-rural areas because they can’t afford anything better will now have to pony up 10x the cost for satellite Internet, or become even more disconnected from the rest of the world than they already are.
According to this, as of 2022, in the US, only 175k households were still using dial-up Internet service from any provider. That’s not a lot of people.
I suppose that someone who was determined to use dial-up access and didn’t want some form of wireless service and didn’t want or couldn’t get access to non-POTS landline service and had been using AOL could switch to them.
EDIT: It looks like it’s still possible to get POTS modems on Amazon. I suspect that that’s mostly for people using fax systems.
Its gotta take them a least a week just to load their yahoo home page on dialup. What are they even able to access on the web these days at 56k?
SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world
on 12 Aug 2025 15:47
collapse
I don’t know, but if I had to guess: email, bank, & government sites are probably the bulk of their use. Those pages don’t change all that often, so once they’re in the browser cache they’ll probably still load at reasonable enough speeds for their use I’d imagine. Those people probably see it as a tool to get certain things done, and that’s about it. They’re likely much older, and so never had much interest in being terminally online.
threaded - newest
Great, so those living in ultra-rural areas because they can’t afford anything better will now have to pony up 10x the cost for satellite Internet, or become even more disconnected from the rest of the world than they already are.
According to this, as of 2022, in the US, only 175k households were still using dial-up Internet service from any provider. That’s not a lot of people.
reviews.org/…/how-many-us-households-are-without-…
I’m guessing that many of those realistically have other landline options and just haven’t switched.
kagis
The amusingly-named-given-the-context dslextreme.com apparently continues to offer nationwide dial-up service.
www.dslextreme.com/dialup/residential
I suppose that someone who was determined to use dial-up access and didn’t want some form of wireless service and didn’t want or couldn’t get access to non-POTS landline service and had been using AOL could switch to them.
EDIT: It looks like it’s still possible to get POTS modems on Amazon. I suspect that that’s mostly for people using fax systems.
Its gotta take them a least a week just to load their yahoo home page on dialup. What are they even able to access on the web these days at 56k?
I don’t know, but if I had to guess: email, bank, & government sites are probably the bulk of their use. Those pages don’t change all that often, so once they’re in the browser cache they’ll probably still load at reasonable enough speeds for their use I’d imagine. Those people probably see it as a tool to get certain things done, and that’s about it. They’re likely much older, and so never had much interest in being terminally online.
But I’ve barely made in a dent in my free trial cd-roms!