Despite advancements in technology, it seems that some people are still caught up in a time warp, or so a new report from AOL would suggest.
Apparently, nearly 2.1 million people in the U.S. still deploy the dial-up service from AOL — what may seem like vestiges of a service from the Draconian era to many — to connect to the Internet.
AOL revealed this astonishing statistic in its Q1 2015 earnings report, which was published on Friday, May 8.
One may be wondering why so many people still connect to the perennially slow dial-up Internet service. Even smartphones are way faster than dial-up Internet!
According to a PewResearch survey conducted in 2013, 70 percent people in the U.S. had access to broadband connections at their residence, which bears testimony to the increase in the adoption of high-speed Internet versus the slower dial-up services.
On an average, the speed of broadband in the U.S. is 11.4 Mbps. By comparison, dial-up Internet has speeds of 56 Kbps, making broadband nearly 200 times speedier than dial-up.
A shocking 2.1 million Americans still on dial-up basically translates to this number experiencing the Internet as it was in its initial development — gif's and other images taking forever to load! With websites being more data-heavy now, one can only wonder how dial-up Internet users manage to stream videos!
So, who are these dial-up users? AOL does not reveal the answer and leaves us to speculate the same. A possibility exists that dial-up users could comprise senior citizens who have not made the transition to broadband likely due to familiarity and comfort. They are clinging on to the tried and tested.
Then, there could be those individuals who are simply stubborn and do not want to shift from dial-up to broadband. Additionally, price could also be a factor and those individuals who are unable to shell out more than $20 each month may be sticking to dial-up.
Alternately, in certain areas, broadband may not be available, compelling people to use dial-up to access the Internet.
