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I used to work at Aol, and it doesn’t surprise me that some significant number of people still use dial up. Not because they’re “trapped” but because that’s th

by ppetty 5y ago

I used to work at Aol, and it doesn’t surprise me that some significant number of people still use dial up. Not because they’re “trapped” but because that’s the only choice in some parts of the country. According to Pew, 3% of us are on dialup & more than twice that use no ISP (maybe that 7% just uses their mobile access?). https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/08/21/3-of-americans-use-dial-up-at-home/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/08/21/3-of-americ... https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/02/7-of-americans-dont-use-the-internet-who-are-they/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/02/7-of-americ... … I’m not sure, but it seems plausible that if 3% had to use dialup 100% of those are on Aol (who else offers dialup?). So there’s probably a lot of money to be milked from that cash cow; along with their other ad & publishing businesses.

sida 5y ago
Your 3% number is from 2013 though
- reaperducer 5y ago
  I looked up the Census numbers last year, and for my county it's something like 17% of people have no internet access -at all-. Not at home. Not at work. Not even on a cell phone. And this isn't exactly the boonies. It's a county with over a million people in it. Three percent of people being on dialup sounds low to me.
pugworthy 5y ago
I think it's incorrect to just associate AOL with dialup. AOL still exists as a web "portal" and more importantly as an email service. My parents (90's) still use AOL email, and have done so for over 25 years now. They used to use dialup, but now are on high speed internet (cable), using just the web interface for the email. For their sake at least, I hope it doesn't go away any time soon. It works for them very well.