Unbelievable: 3.5 Million People Still Pay For AOL Dial-up

[suncho]

http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

 

[azxcvbnm321]

No, the fixed costs of providing broadband far outweigh the gains to be made by hooking up people in rural areas or in areas with low population density. Optical cables are very expensive to install and they would have to dig up ground and buy up rights to do that. Even if they could charge $100 a month for broadband service, a customer base of only 30,000 would mean it would take a very very long time for them to make their money back.

Companies would build if it were profitable. The fact that no one is building means that it is not at all profitable so don't hold your breath.

 

[poxenium]

It makes me feel lucky to live in a city in Romania, where a 50MBPS internet connection costs ~$7/month. Truth be told many cities still struggle with 4-6MBPS DSL connections, but Dial-Up connections have almost completely disappeared from Romania. The only form of Dial-Up still used is through GSM networks in GPRS mode, in very small towns where are no land telephone lines for DSL.

 

[Montezuma]

[citation][nom]azxcvbnm321[/nom]No, the fixed costs of providing broadband far outweigh the gains to be made by hooking up people in rural areas or in areas with low population density. Optical cables are very expensive to install and they would have to dig up ground and buy up rights to do that. Even if they could charge $100 a month for broadband service, a customer base of only 30,000 would mean it would take a very very long time for them to make their money back. Companies would build if it were profitable. The fact that no one is building means that it is not at all profitable so don't hold your breath.[/citation]

You are suggesting that AT&T would have to install fiber optic lines to provide broadband, which is patently false. AT&T would simply need to install Remote Terminals, for straight DSL, or VRADs, for its U-VERSE. At the number of people AT&T could receive money from, in my county alone, such a venture would be greatly profitable.

The problem is that AT&T is charging more and more(Save for me, as I pay nothing for my landline. My girlfriend works for that rotten company) to use the 50+ year old POTS network here, and there have been little to no improvements. We even have to rely on booster coils, which is one reason we, at our home, cannot get DSL.

There are three central offices here, one for each of the small towns in this county. Oh, and there are a few remote terminals, for the very rich subdivisions. Outside of that, AT&T refuses to put any effort into bringing broadband out here, and Comcast will only provide cable television access. As to that, if Comcast is willing to provide digital cable, On-Demand, etc, then I do not understand why it doesn't provide internet access out here.

 

[Guest]

I try to download a blueray movie from aol dialup service I need to wait 50 years to finish my download. ok fine. just wait.

 

[SteelCity1981]

the thing people forget to take into consideration is a lot of rural areas still only have the option of dialup where broadband hasn't reached that far yet out there. There is an option to get satilite if you are willing to pay 80+ dollars a month in which most casual computer users won't pay that high of a premuim for somthing that is a lite DSL at best. Not to mentiopn every time a storm comes by your connection gets lost. So paying 10 to 20 bucks a months for dial up is the way to go still compared to the much more costly alternitives to rural areas that aren't able to gethigh speed yet..

 

[dragonsqrrl]

It's all the Blizzard haters in North America under a single ISP.

 

[nuvon]

Are they still using 56k modem? or something newer came out.

 

[livebriand]

Dang... around here, in a semi-rural area around San Francisco, I thought ATT's DSL was slow (I had 1.5mbps before, then got comcast, and noticed that att now only offers 768kbps so their network must be overloaded).

 

[livebriand]

[citation][nom]beardguy[/nom]We are the 1%!! There's the standard youtube options 360p, 240p, etc. Or if your on AOL dialup , you get the options "slideshow" or "text description of video"[/citation]
lol... as part of the 99%, I'd like the default to be 480p and fullscreen 720p or something like that.

 

[livebriand]

Wait, if I'm not mistaken, DSL uses the same lines to the home as dial-up does! What the hell? If so, it couldn't be that expensive to deploy, just put in some new equipment in the same boxes where they already have the phone stuff...

 

[jivdis1x]

The problem is, those people have an AOL email accounts. They have all their friends on the contact list. They think they need to pay to keep the account active. The majority of them already has broadband meanwhile still paying for AOL. AOL does not tell them, AOL is web base now. They don't need that crappy software installed on their PC. The account is active and free when they stop paying AOL.

 

[Mathos]

[citation][nom]livebriand[/nom]Wait, if I'm not mistaken, DSL uses the same lines to the home as dial-up does! What the hell? If so, it couldn't be that expensive to deploy, just put in some new equipment in the same boxes where they already have the phone stuff...[/citation]

DSL uses regular copper wire lines, and regular phone lines. The big difference is all transmission over the line is Digital, which puts a lot more bandwidth on a standard rj11 phone line, with a lot less heat stress. One of the reasons Dial up was limited to 56kbps was due tp the baud limit, caused by using an analog carrier signal to transmit the data. Anything over that would start to overheat the wires in the line.

Biggest problem with DSL is the range limit, usually have to be within 30,000 ft of the office, or just over 5 miles. Really all they add to the lines are digital repeaters and routers. What I don't understand is, when I lived in Michigan, I live 10-15 miles from anything. But I could still get cable tv and internet. Mind you, the cable lines had been run back in the 80s and 90s. And I lived on a gravel road up there. But down here where I live in Texas, I'm 6ish miles from town and can't get anything. And there is a fairly decent population on the road I live on.

 

[michaelahess]

I bet a bunch of them don't use it anymore and just gave up on trying to cancel their accounts! Or even worse, think they still need to pay for it even with their fancy new DSL. Lots of stupid people out there....

 

[alidan]

[citation][nom]caedenv[/nom]I understand the need for dialup in some areas (my dad was one of them before he went crazy and got satellite internet). But the AOL dialup? Really? I mean there are sooooo many choices out there in the world for dialup service that are way better! Plus there are cell phone plans that are becoming less horrible, and are worlds faster than Dialup speeds.[/citation]

10$ a month for all you can use? that's about 13 gb a month if my math is right, doesn't a 13 gb cellphone plan cost... what... 120+$

[citation][nom]SteelCity1981[/nom]the thing people forget to take into consideration is a lot of rural areas still only have the option of dialup where broadband hasn't reached that far yet out there. There is an option to get satilite if you are willing to pay 80+ dollars a month in which most casual computer users won't pay that high of a premuim for somthing that is a lite DSL at best. Not to mentiopn every time a storm comes by your connection gets lost. So paying 10 to 20 bucks a months for dial up is the way to go still compared to the much more costly alternitives to rural areas that aren't able to gethigh speed yet..[/citation]

for us, even a cloudy day and satalite went out, its why we went back to cable.

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all that said, think of it this way, there are many people who just dont need the internet as we know it, but cant go on without email anymore.

so should they pay 30-50$ a month for dls or cable, or pay 10 or less for dialup?

honestly, where i live dial up was 10$ a month, and cable line was 30 base, we went for the best which is about 80$ a month, and i believe 7 years later, i live in a rural town in wisconsin, and have a 50mbit line, with 3mbit up. for 80$, sad think is, in japan or other smaller countries, i could get a 100 up and down line for 10-20$ a moth.

 

[Taylor422]

[citation][nom]Montezuma[/nom]Well, it is surprising that people still pay AOL for internet access. The fact that people that live out is more rural areas, almost like myself(I use Verizon Wireless, which is about as fast as dial-up), have to rely on dialup is not surprising. Still, I live in a county which is larger than many(almost 30,000) that have close to 100% access to broadband, and it a part of a metro area(Atlanta), but only 20%, or less, has access to broadband.I live on a street that has quite a lot of houses on it, even though we all own 10+ acres each, but we are nowhere close to having access to any type of real broadband. There is a lot of money to be had, if AT&T, or the other idiot companies, would roll out some real broadband. The only issue is that we do not live in downtown Atlanta, where all the money is.[/citation]

Same problem down here. We're about 45 minutes away from Atlanta and we can barely get 3mbps down.

 

[halcyon]

Dial-up? Aaaaaaah heeelllllll Noooooo!!!!

 

[del35]

It seems like an eternity ago that AOL was the center of online life for all of America's squares.

Ummm, lots of those squares became Apple fanboys and Apple is milking them to death, delivering to them drm infested lockeddown junkhardware an exorbitant prices. Poor is the state of the toobumb. Live and learn.

 

[Azn Cracker]

If you live in the city, you can have 60mbps internet. If you like in the country, 56kbps

 

[crewton]

Must be lucky. I live in the middle of no where nebraska pop. 3000 and get 20Mbps down 1Mpbs up. My parents only get 1.5Mbps dsl and I feel bad for them People in the country around me only get dial though. Not even a cell phone tower for 3G coverage.