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AOL’s dial up internet takes its last bow, marking the end of an era (apnews.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (21 children)

In the U.S., according to Census Bureau data, an estimated 163,401 households were using dial-up alone to get online in 2023, representing just over 0.13% of all homes with internet subscriptions nationwide.

Are these households in rural areas without many alternatives?

Starlink is available in the vast majority of the US. What is the cost difference though?

edit: i dont like elon musk or starlink

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Starlink is $120 a month

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    You can get the roam plan for $50 a month. If you were doing fine with dial-up, then the 50GB data cap shouldn't be an issue. You could even use the standby mode for $5 a month for 11 months out of the year and will still be an order of magnitude faster than the dial-up connection.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    There are other legacy satellite providers like hughesnet that are somehow still hanging on. They don't really hold a candle to starlink performance-wise, and they shit the bed in bad weather, but at least they're not Elon. There's going to be a lot of latency, but it'll feel blazing fast if you're coming from dialup.

    There are other dialup providers still remaining as well, besides AOL. I know msn is still kicking at least. It's kind of funny to think about receiving dialup service when almost all POTS lines have gone away, and much of the modern web will be borderline unusable without lots of tweaking, but at least grandma who lives out in the sticks can check her email, use chat clients, download articles and books, etc.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Starlink actually sucks fat dick unless it's literally your only option.

    Even in rural America, you still have access to Visible's unlimited data for $25/month. They use Verizon's network, which covers just about everywhere people live in the US.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (6 children)

    Its not perfect to replace for all those rural households, but a 5G based internet 'gateway' is an affordable and viable option for people at least somewhere near a 5G tower.

    Unlike that national fiber build out that never really happened to anywhere near the extent that was promised, its not that expensive to set up a 5G cell tower, and for users its eaaay cheaper than any satellite internet, including Starlink.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Okay but about the fiber shit, they covered 99.7% of my city and didn't cover my street and I'm within walking distance of city hall. I really wish there was a way I could compel them to give me fiber. One of the few things I dislike about my location.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Weirdly, I'm seeing fiber in the most unlikely places. They're running it in my hood, which is on the bleeding edge of a small redneck town, nowhere downstream from here to feed for more money.

    What really blew my mind, they're running fiber in the hood where my camp lies, 900 souls altogether, and that includes a fair-sized surrounding area. Can't be 50 homes anywhere near. And again, nothing downstream of that hood, it's just for us. And both places already had cable internet.

    No idea how those two ISPs will ever earn their money back from so few customers, with maintenance stacked on top. Maybe running fiber is stupid cheap now? Haven't worked for an ISP for 20 years, who knows.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Wait, what?

    I am genuienly surprised to hear this... I mean... cool... I guess?

    That... there's more fiber lines than I thought there... was?

    But also yeah that doesn't make any business sense to me either.

    Unless they're planning on building a data center there in the near future.

    Then, that might make a lot of sense.

    Oh well, I'm still pissed that we gave ISPs like half a trillion dollars or whatever to build out fiber around a decade ago, and because that law was written by lobbyists, well it was apparently legal for said ISPs to just throw most of that money at stock buybacks and C suite stock packages, and then there were never any consequences for that.

    Either way, I'll take not blazing fast speeds and no datacap over... literally any plan with a data cap, anyday.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Less than a billion I think, but several hundred million? Anyway, you're right, they ate it all paying off investors in the form of stock buybacks. Rural folk got nada.

    Yeah, very weird expansion. We don't even have much in the way of utilities at camp. We can get water, but certainly no sewer. Hell, you can't even build "permanent structures" on my land. And I assume the surrounding land is even worse for flooding and being protected wetlands.

    Sounds like I can get a power pole for free! Still working on that.

    The roads are private, anyone can travel them, no problem, but they're on us to maintain. Couple of dudes use tractors to level them and someone dropped loads of gravel and red clay to fix the slippery bits. (Shit like this is why country people think they don't need no goddamned gubermint. You'd have to live it to understand.)

    This is a Cox Cable endeavour. Used to contract for them, finest ISP I ever heard of. Apparently the Cox family took it public, then bought it back, said fuck you to the stock market and ran it themselves again. Hard to describe to those not in the business, but their cable plant is head and shoulders above anything I've ever touched. I assume they're rich as hell and I wish them well, well deserved for once.

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