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A recent post on another thread got me curious as to how many people actually still use dial-up connections. I live in a small town in Panama, up in the hills, and even I have high speed internet. So what do you use/have???
I, being a technophile, have had high speed internet since 1999. Back then, less than 1% of the population had it.
I got ya one-upped. I had cable Internet in '98. I moved to West L.A. (instead of somewhere else - I was moving no matter what) specifically because that was where Cox Cable was testing their service, before rolling it out to their entire customer base.
Prior to that, I was a sysop on a BBS that had a fractional T1 (as well as dial-up), and before the T1 was installed, it was net-connected via a 56k FRAD.
I think the OP should probably take into account the that majority of people visiting this forum are technophiles, so the response the the poll is going to be skewed.
I think the OP should probably take into account the that majority of people visiting this forum are technophiles, so the response the the poll is going to be skewed.
Oh I agree - but if I posted anywhere else I'd probably have it moved. If anyone can think of someplace else where it will 'stay', I'm open to suggestions I'm just trying to essentially make a point that the percentage of people who are actually still using dial up connections is like 1 in 1,000,000 lol
People in some rural areas still have no choice in the matter - dial-up is their only option. The number of those areas is dwindling, but they still exist. Fixed point-to-point wireless is growing in availability - I was going to move cross-country some 5 or 6 years ago to work for a startup doing that - as is WiMax. DSL is limited in how far away you can be from the PoP, and cable doesn't exist everywhere. Oh, and satellite internet just plain sucks.
Also, dial-up is used by people that travel a lot, as it's sometimes the only sure-fire way to get online.
I got cable internet in 98. The local cable company put a little one sentence statement in the paper looking for beta testers for cable broadband.
I think it was 500K down, and 100, or 150K up. There were no consumer routers at the time, but I found some software that shared an internet connection with a single NIC, basically did what ICS that came out as part of Windows 98SE did. I had been using it even with dial up, as I had networked my computers with 10Base2
Also, dial-up is used by people that travel a lot, as it's sometimes the only sure-fire way to get online.
And dial up will still work in a power outage(at least until your laptop battery dies anyway).
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I had cable Internet in '98. I moved to West L.A. (instead of somewhere else - I was moving no matter what) specifically because that was where Cox Cable was testing their service, before rolling it out to their entire customer base. 
I'm just trying to essentially make a point that the percentage of people who are actually still using dial up connections is like 1 in 1,000,000 lol
