How Broke Would You Have to Be to Revert Back to Dial-Up?
In an effort to cut costs wherever possible, some consumers are going back to the cheaper, crappier-in-every-way dial-up we all cast aside years ago. This recession has just gotten serious.
Sales of the often sub-$US10 dial-up subscriptions have increased after the stock market crash and many report that they’ve switched from broadband, though NetZero CEO Mark Goldston was quick to note that “this is not the iPod crowd we’re talking about.” Chances are if you’re reading this, you’re more likely to try to pawn your oven than give up broadband, but where exactly does it fall on your list of priorities? Would you give up a cable TV or Xbox Live subscription first? Let us know exactly how poor you’d have to be to go back to dial-up in the comments. [Orlando Sentinel via Crunchgear]
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
With the cost of limited ADSL2+ having gone up, not down, here in Australia and the ridiculous drop outs and slow speeds (I’m with TPG) – it’s no wonder people are considering going back to dial-up.
Australia really is a joke on the world scene for broadband and noone in a position to do anything about it has.
I pay $60 a month for ADSL2+ and I’m barely reaching ADSL speed this year. Plus I’m capped at 30gb which means I can’t use the internet as a continuous media delivery source.
Yes – I want to stream media from around the world. It’s the way it should be but unfortunately it feels like we’re going backwards not forwards.
Hmm, certainly would sooner part with xbox live than with decent internet. I mean, how would I use the xbox live without the net connection?…
Cable TV hasn’t interested me for years either. I don’t really watch terribly much TV at all, though I do watch plenty of DVDs I guess.
But to me, it’s pretty essential, because I often use things like Skype for work and it saves me a lot of cash on international calls. I don’t think it’s even close to cost neutral, but it’s still worthwhile to me.
I was stuck on dial up for a very long time as adsl is not available to me in my area, however i bought wireless broadband so someone would have to pay me to use dialup… and then i wouldent go on the internet…
You can get a 3G plan for about $15-$20, I’d do that over dialup. Also dialup hidden cost is the phone calls and having a phone line. I know I need a phone line for ADSL but when a phone line costs $20 a month, your already ahead going to just 3G. 3G Modems are cheap now.
I would find it hard to give up broadband. I like to work from home and there is no way that dialup can handle all the stuff I do simultaneously like VoIP, Email, Upload and download of large files. I need a VPN connection to do this and dialup over VPN would be intollerably slow.
Even my personal usage of the internet would suffer and things like my Tivo service amoungst other things really works best with broadband.