There was a day when the sound of accessing the internet had a distinct pattern of noises. These noises were the sounds of your dialup modem making a connection. As high speed connections have become the standard, dialup connections have become a rarity. Here are ten facts about the decline of this once common mode of connection.
- It’s still available. What a lot of people who use high speed internet access don’t realize is that dialup access is still available and there are a lot of people who are stilling using it as their means of internet connection. Usually this is in rural areas where the options are limited, but dialup has not yet totally disappeared.
- High graphic websites. As the websites on the internet increased their graphic content, the slower these sites would load over a dialup connection. Even though the dialup connection speed had not decreased, the speed of browsing did. This made web browsing through a dialup connection more time consuming.
- Email graphics. Initially, most email communication was in text format only, similar to writing a letter. However, as more consumers began accessing the internet through broadband connections and learning to upload digital photo images, email became a means of sharing photo images. With a dialup connection, an email with several photos could take a very long time to download.
- Satellite internet. In rural areas where cable and DSL broadband solutions were not available, satellite internet offered a high speed option that would allow consumers a much faster connection than their dialup. In spite of the wide difference in price between the two options, many rural households opted for the faster satellite connection rather than put up with the slow dialup connection.
- DSL – This form of high speed connection provided the consumer the ability to receive internet service over their phone line without sacrificing the use of the phone line while using the internet. After having paid for two phone lines for dialup, DSL became an easy option to switch to when it became available.
- Cable – With cable television in so many homes, using the cable company’s as an internet provider was an easy switch. The difference in speed was the biggest advantage though.
- Land lines. The fact that dialup internet connection required the use of a land line phone was one of the other declining factors. You were faced with two choices, either tie up your phone line whenever you used the internet and miss phone calls because callers were receiving a busy signal, or pay for a second phone line so that you had access to your phone line while you were on the internet.
- Disconnects. Another issue with dialup that caused frustration to its users was disconnects during downloads and browsing. Since downloading information could be very slow, having to begin the process a second or third time due to a dropped connection could be extremely frustrating. It was a situation that would seldom happen when using a broadband connection.
- Speed expectations. As people began experiencing higher speed connections in their work environments, a dialup connection at home began to seem much slower than it had before. Once people became accustomed to higher speeds at work, they wanted the same type of access at home.
- Modems – When dialup was the main form of internet connection, most computers came with a dialup modem installed as a standard piece of equipment. Since dialup is now a rare form of connection, a dialup modem would have to be purchased as an add-on item.
The dialup connection is still being used by a number of households around the world, in spite of all the factors that have led to its decline. It is hard to say how long it will be before it no longer is a viable option.
