How may dial-up users, choice or higher speed unavailable?

Am at dad's this weekend. Not only is dial-up the only option other then possibly satellite, his top speed is only 28.8k. I am hoping something better will come along before he dies but there is no cable in this small town and way too far away from the central phone office for DSL. I am hoping maybe wireless may become an option as finally there is cell phone reception in the area. Anybody else in the same situation, are you on dial up by choice or unavailability of other options?

Same situation here at my house, except the fastest I can get is 26.4k. Often only 24k or even 22k.

:buddies:

I was stuck with dial-up for years, but recently decided to try WildBlue satellite service. I love it! It is no good for gaming because the latency averages around 1000, but considering the distance the traffic travels, I guess it isn't all that bad. I can upload/download files lots faster. For $50 a month you get 512/128 speeds which is what I started at, I now have the 1M/256 service for $70 a month. Yeah, its pricey, but its my only option besides dial-up. Some rural electric cooperatives offer it with a $5 a month discount.

Roger

I had Earthlink for a decade or more (up until early last year), and when they added the "accelerator" software (basically a proxy at the ISP that compresses images/text, and removes animated objects, and heavily caches on the local PC)--I found for everyday web browsing, that it worked very well.

Obviously, an accelerator does not help with file downloading or if you need full resolution images, streaming audio/video, etc.--but I was very happy with it. I have seen other vendors offer it as a $5-$10 per month option--probably worth it IMHO.

That, plus using something Like FireFox + NoScript + AdblockPlus (with 2-3 basic filter sets) will really strip down what is loaded to your PC's browser. And, dial-up becomes pretty usable again.

I finally went with high speed (cable in my case) because I got really tired of the windows updates (and re-installs, and anti-virus updates, etc.) that would take sometimes 8 hours or more to upload to my PC (or I would have to drag the laptop to work and download my updates). Adding a wireless NAT router/firewall for security, home computer network, an Ethernet connected printer, and WIFI connection with my laptop (instead of cables) was just icing on the cake.

-Bill

We live out in the country and don't have the option of cable or DSL or other traditional broadband services, and our dialup typically connects at 24-26k. Until recently, our only option was satellite, but the services we looked into had very high equipment and start-up costs, and expensive annual contracts.

A year or two ago, Verizon wireless expanded its digital network out to cover our area, and we went with their wireless broadband service, using a PCMCIA modem card to connect with a laptop. The service and hardware is somewhat problematic, and Verizon's customer service sucks, but there were no start-up or equipment costs, and the monthly fee is $60, but my wife's work pays $20/month since she uses it when she is on call for work. We connect at 115k, which isn't blazingly fast, but it is more than 4x as fast as our dial-up, and doesn't tie up the phone (we used to have a 2nd phone line at a cost of $20/month). This will do for us until DSL or cable internet makes its way out here.

Roger, what were your equipment and start up charges? 512 comparatively speaking to what he has now would seem like a T3 line. I originally had 768k DSL service and I thought the web pages loaded fine at that speed.

z96Cobra said:

I was stuck with dial-up for years, but recently decided to try WildBlue satellite service. I love it! It is no good for gaming because the latency averages around 1000, but considering the distance the traffic travels, I guess it isn't all that bad. I can upload/download files lots faster. For $50 a month you get 512/128 speeds which is what I started at, I now have the 1M/256 service for $70 a month. Yeah, its pricey, but its my only option besides dial-up. Some rural electric cooperatives offer it with a $5 a month discount.

Roger

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The only other thing to be careful about with Satellite Internet is that there may be a "hidden usage" throttle. If you upload/download too much data per hour (or day, or month) they may throttle back the "official" rate so that they "fairly" can spread the bandwidth among all of their users.

But--I have also heard that Comcast (cable) has killed people's accounts if there is too much activity on a home account (and that information is not in your normal account terms of service or with the 1st level call center--one person I read about got a phone message from "Comcast" warning them to cut back on their usage--called the normal 1-800 number, CSR did not know anything about it and told the customer to ignore it--next month, account was canceled with, apparently, no appeal).

-Bill

I have dial-up at home, and not by choice. Can't get DSL or cable where I live. And the annoying thing is that it's very close to town, driving-wise. I can be in the center of town in about 10 minutes. And people I know who are 20 or 30 minutes away into the boonies can get DSL, because the phone lines are newer or there is a repeater near by or something. But I can't. Nor can I get broad-band wireless even though there are half a dozen transmitting radio-towers around the area. Things are just such that I don't get a good enough signal.

So the only choice of broad band would be sattelite, and I am just not willing to pay $50/mo. At some point that hastle of dialup will become such that I will just bite the bullet and get satellite internet. But right now, I can't justify it.

I'm hoping that FiOS becomes available to me soon--within the next year or so. Then I'll go from the slowest to the fastest internet service. Ah . . . I dream of that day.

I was a computer and network specialist for many years. All I will say is don't bother with satellite. Worst nightmare ever - way over priced - always all sorts of problems. Slower than 28.8k dialup if you are on a secure web site (https://) and very limited in downloading. Tech support were complete idiots and rude too. Dialup may be a pain but I'd never do satellite again - fortunately they got DSL here a couple years ago. There are a lot of new technologies on the horizon for higher speeds to be available in remote areas. I'm sure it will get to nearly everywhere eventually.

matrixshaman said:

I was a computer and network specialist for many years. All I will say is don't bother with satellite. Worst nightmare ever - way over priced - always all sorts of problems. Slower than 28.8k dialup if you are on a secure web site (https://) and very limited in downloading. Tech support were complete idiots and rude too. Dialup may be a pain but I'd never do satellite again - fortunately they got DSL here a couple years ago. There are a lot of new technologies on the horizon for higher speeds to be available in remote areas. I'm sure it will get to nearly everywhere eventually.

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Don't know what service you are talking about, but my WildBlue account is awesome, especially when that is the only broadband option available. The only problems I've had with my service is when the rain is really heavy (hasn't rained here in weeks) either here at the house or at the downlink center. "Slower than 28.8k dialup on a secure site"?? Not hardly, last time I checked 1.0M is a "little" faster than 28.8... I don't know where you got your info, but in my experience it is completely wrong. It does take a second or two longer to a page/file/whatever to start displaying/downloading (due to the distance the info has to travel), but once it starts, it is at broadband speeds.

Roger

geepondy said:

Roger, what were your equipment and start up charges? 512 comparatively speaking to what he has now would seem like a T3 line. I originally had 768k DSL service and I thought the web pages loaded fine at that speed.

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The 512k service is $49 a month IIRC. The installation was free for a mount on the side of the house, but we decided we wanted a pole mount instead. That was $25, but we used our tractor & post hole digger to dig the hole for the install guys, so they just charged us for the quickcrete and pole. The equipment cost was $300. Now it looks like they have the equipment for $249 and an install fee of $75. Even though the sat service is expensive compared to cable/dsl (neither are available here) I would never go back to dial-up. There is a FAP (fair access policy) that limits your monthly volumn, but I've never come close to violating it. On the $49 plan you get 7.5G down and 2G (IIRC) upload limit per rolling 30 days (its averaged). On the 1.0M plan I have now, I get 12G down and 3G up.

Roger

I got my info by measuring it - 27 years as a computer and network specialist and no mine wasn't Wildblue so maybe they are better. And trust me it sucked big time in so many ways. And they DID admit that secure web sites were way slower due to some technical stuff their system could not handle. Just glad to be back to DSL. I knew soon as I posted this someone who has satellite would counter what I said. I know some of them may seem better than dialup and some probably are in some ways but compared to DSL, cable or fiber satellite just plain sucks. Rain, snow and all such things so present here at times just totally knocked it out too. I just can't say enough wonderful things about satellite

If there is Sprint coverage in your area, they have both a PCMCIA card and a USB dongle that provides about 700kbps downstream on average. When in a great signal strength area, I have gotten as high as 2Mbps downstream but that is rare. I use mine in my laptop when I travel. While the average speed is not as fast as cable or DSL, it's good enough that I never bother with WiFi, even when it's available. Sprint has a 15 or 30 day trial period where you can return it without penalty if you don't like it or it doesn't work in your area.

For home use, Sprint also has a Linksys wireless router that you can plug the PCMCIA card into and use WiFi throughout your house. I do not own one of these yet, but have seen it in use.

Verizon has an identical service, although fewer card options, so compare to see which one has the best coverage in your area. They also have a trial period with no penalties for return. Other carriers claim to have high speed data, but none come close to the Sprint/Verizon options.

I use dial-ups, always on. either DL music or uploading ringtones.
I use my celly to surf the web, like i'm doing now.
may eventually switch to verizon dsl, in no rush. hate verizon.

What is IIRC? 7.5 gig a month sounds like very little. I hope that doesn't include downloading requirements of web pages and/or files or binary downloads.

z96Cobra said:

On the $49 plan you get 7.5G down and 2G (IIRC) upload limit per rolling 30 days (its averaged). On the 1.0M plan I have now, I get 12G down and 3G up.

Roger

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IIRC=If I Recall Correctly...

-Bill

geepondy said:

What is IIRC? 7.5 gig a month sounds like very little. I hope that doesn't include downloading requirements of web pages and/or files or binary downloads.

Click to expand...

IIRC = If I recall correctly

The 7.5G of downloads per rolling 30 days is for any/all bandwidth used. I was kind of worried about it at first, but I never got close to the limit. I've downloaded music, used echolink, watched streaming video, tons of surfing, and still didn't get close to it. When I switched to the higher priced plan (1.0M and 12G) I did download a game from Atari that was 6.5G and my average was up there pretty high for 30 days and then it dropped right back down to "normal". Gaming over a sat connection sucks due to the high lag/ping times, but on occasion it is doable.

Roger

matrixshaman said:

I know some of them may seem better than dialup and some probably are in some ways but compared to DSL, cable or fiber satellite just plain sucks. Rain, snow and all such things so present here at times just totally knocked it out too. I just can't say enough wonderful things about satellite

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Unfortunately for me and the OP, dial-up and Satellite are the only options available. I would love to be able to get cable/dsl/wireless/fiber because of the excellent speed and latency/ping times, not to mention being a lot cheaper per month. I use a cable connection at work, and it blows my satellite connection away. If you only had the choice between dial-up and satellite (and cost is not a factor) I'm sure 99.9% would take the satellite service. And I did mention that rain affects the service at times.

Roger

Dial up only here where I live. I looked into satellite but the cost was to much for me. I also use alot of VPN into work and from the research I did Wildblue service was no faster than dialup with a VPN tunnel to to their system restrictions.

My phone company is thinking of putting in a DSL repeater for my area, but population is low and I am at the bottom of their upgrade list

Andy