Mailbag: Dial-up is dead

Mailbag: Dial-up is dead
For some readers, dial-up is their only option

Network World, 11/20/02

Dial-up is not history – dial-up is a lifeline. That’s the sentiment from readers who wrote in who were either traveling overseas, live in rural areas, or work for cash-strapped companies.

I get the sense that if you could, you would ditch the wired networks in a heartbeat. But serious barriers such as geography, high price and security exist in wireless deployment.

In this newsletter, I’m going to tackle your concerns about geography. For the next newsletter, we’ll examine your thoughts on security and cost.

The biggest concern, you say, is the sparseness of broadband access. How can you consider the drastic move to wireless when you can’t even get DSL, cable or satellite service?

“Here in Oregon, for example, there are numerous areas that the telecommunications infrastructure is so inferior that dial-up 56k modem access is not even available,” says one reader. “Ubiquitous broadband access is a ‘long’ way off for many parts of the Pacific Northwest outside the I-5 corridor.”

Other readers lament what they perceive as a DSL disaster. “Many of us are stuck with dial-up access so we envy the rest of you who can go broadband,” one person responds. “I tried SBC's DSL ‘service’ and it was awful. I couldn't get a connection after my first three months of service which led to an ordeal of voice mail hell, phone screener, live persons who seemed like they were reading off an FAQ sheet.”

Another says: “Thanks for rubbing it in. I live on the fringe of the Washington, D.C., metro area, in a county of about 55,000 [residents]. I have been trying to get an alternative to dial-up access for years, to no avail. At the peak of the dot-com frenzy, several CLECs kept telling me DSL should be available soon, but it never happened. My Verizon rep eventually told me that my local central office would probably never be provisioned for DSL, and that my best bet would be a cable modem service. The local cable company touted their broadband Internet service, which would arrive ‘next year,’ but after three years we're still waiting.”

An overseas traveler says my predictions jump the gun. “For those of us who travel to the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia, we will be struggling with dial-up for quite a while longer (although there are encouraging signs in the metropolitan areas of certain Middle East countries),” he says. “I hope laptop manufacturers continue to support modems for those of us traveling to the Second and Third World for the forseeable future.”

Other readers say they are stuck with satellite technology because of geography. “Many of us still reside in 'technologically challenged' parts of the country, where the only high-speed alternative is a satellite system (still much more expensive than most of us are willing to pay for the speed boost),” one reader says. “We are probably not the majority of users online but there are still hundreds of millions of us.”

Another reader says: “I had a cable modem when I lived in Nashville and loved it. I moved back to Michigan two years ago and am still waiting for any type of high-speed Internet in my new hometown. I could do DirecTV Satellite, but that has a huge up front cost for equipment.”

Next time, we’ll look at how the issues surrounding cost and security in wireless and broadband deployments will keep dial-up around for a long, long time.

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