Dial-up holdouts ask: Why go to broadband?

OK. While you are correct that removing the copper plant is not warranted, incumbent telcos are facing competition from Cable companies, and even Wimax and Cellular systems are now giving increasing competition pressures to the local phone companies. Of course this is a benefit to the local people.

Reply to
Dana
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In comp.dcom.xdsl Kurt Ullman wrote in part:

Well, they might have tried, but VZ couldn't remove the outside plant because it doesn't belong to them. It belongs to the LEC.

Inside the NID, they could tear out wire (with the owners consent, probably unavailable on a rental) but that would just cost them money.

Most likely they ran fiber to their own NID & jumpered into premises wiring and cable.

-- Robert

Reply to
Robert Redelmeier

Yes it does belong to them. Verizon is the ILEC for those areas now. Pretty soon we'll be back to one telco LEC.

They did that too. But also removed the copper from the pole/pedestal to the home in the process.

Reply to
Doug McIntyre

In comp.dcom.xdsl Doug McIntyre wrote in part:

Well, in those areas it could. But it wouldn't be very long before the PUC extended its' control to cover fiber, including allowing CLEC-type access.

-- Robert

Reply to
Robert Redelmeier

Most web sites are now designed an the assumption that they'll be accessed at high speed. For example, the HTML alone for Yahoo's home page is over 100kB. Add in images, scripts, style sheets, and such -- which are unfortunately no longer just eye candy but often necessary for viewing and navigation -- and a single page can easily exceed 300kB.

"Surfing" the web on dialup isn't practical any more. It's more like a slow paddle, hoping that the page you're trying to read doesn't automatically refresh too often.

Reply to
Neill Massello

snipped-for-privacy@newsguy.com (Neill Massello) hath wroth:

What tool are you using to determine the page size?

Using Mozilla Firefox with "List all images" and "Extended Status Bar" add-ons, for Yahoo, I get 40KB for the base HTML plus 14 images at about 54KB in images for a total of about 100KBytes. However, it's a pain to do the arithmetic for each page, and even worse to do the calcs for benchmarking the load time. Is there a better and easier way to get these numbers?

Use Lynx or one of the other text browsers?

Many sites have text only alternatives. Same with over-simplified versions for cell phone and PDA browsers. For example, a WML emulator will convince many popular web sites that you're using a mobile phone with a WAP browser and deliver minimal web pages.

When I enable the WAP mode, Yahoo delivers 12KBytes of HTML and

2KBytes in images. Same with Google, but you have to start at:

Think small.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

| > Bear in mind that it's a big world and not everybody has very | > much money. | >

| > $30/month may be small change for some, but it's a lot of money | > for others. | > -- | > PeteCresswell | | Chew on this, when copper wiring is eventually replaced, dialup | will cease to work, and they people will have to choose a | broadband offering.

????

For giggle and grins we hooked a dial up lap top to a VoIP system. We were able to make the connection and it worked. We did not do any speed test as this was part of a bar bet.

Reply to
NotMe

"Jeff Liebermann"

| >I don't mind at all the grand brats getting involved (and screwing up the | >systems) as that means they are physically visiting. Even if there is no | >real conversation the old folk do get a great kick out of the grand kids and | >others just being there. I have one former Marine DI that gets a real kick | >out of playing the Pony Lov game with his 7 y.o. grand daughter. | >

| >He had me set up two user names. One for his private use that is PW | >protected and one for when his grand kids visit. FWIW the 7 y.o, gave the | >old guy a WebKin doll so they can 'play' remotely. | | Nice. Abandonment by the relatives is a common problem. It's part of | the American way of aging and it sucks. I've been there myself and | can't offer any simple solution. I can fix the computers, but not the | relatives.

The inability to address the abandonment by friends and relatives is one of the reason me and mine (me/the wife/kids and grand kids) are involved with Hospice. ( I recommend to all to check into the local program and at least take the Hospice orientation classes. Not everyone is made out to do the work but taking the classes will give one a clear look into themselves.)

A side comment: through my Hospice work I've met and become friends with men who were on Iow Jima, Battan, flew B17s over Germany, P40s in China, were crew with Dolittle, landed on the beaches in Normandy, etc. Even if the stories were embellished by 50 years of selective memory the hearing was an enormous experience for me. The stories told by the ladies that stayed home were another eye opener. Stories from Korea and NAM were not quite so pleasant but deserved the telling and the hearing. I expect before long to be dealing with Gulf War vets and their families.

Reply to
NotMe

The last security update (2007-007) for Mac OS X was more than 14MB.

Granted, you can survive without all those updates; but if you want to keep a Mac reasonably current, you need high speed access or a friend who has it.

Reply to
Neill Massello

Per NotMe:

It's probably too late for them, but my reaction to a few (*very* few... but nonetheless...) similar experiences is that I really wish I'd recorded the conversations. Back then, it would have been a challenge, but now with compact digital video cams... or even a video-capable cell phone....

Reply to
(PeteCresswell)

Under the protocols for Hospice (NDA), lacking a specific written release, I can't disclose what we talk about.

Part of what allows the patent to talk about these things is a clear understanding on my part about the nature of our relationship with regard to the NDA.

I expect that even asking would shut the gate for many of my friends. (By that time we are friends)

Reply to
NotMe

onbroadbandasdialup?" I guess there are those that don't mind staring

Surely one of the best reasons for having a dial-up account is that your computer is less likely to be attacked by "evil hackers", since with broadband your computer is connected to the internet all the time. Even if dial-up is slower, that is relatively unimportant

Reply to
virgmob007

snipped-for-privacy@netscape.net hath wroth:

Go back a few messages to:

and see item #2.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

| | Surely one of the best reasons for having a dial-up account is that | your computer is less likely to be attacked by "evil hackers", since | with broadband your computer is connected to the internet all the | time. Even if dial-up is slower, that is relatively unimportant | They make ON/OFF switches to address that eventuality.

Reply to
NotMe

In comp.dcom.xdsl snipped-for-privacy@netscape.net wrote in part:

Dial-up is definitely _not_ any more secure than broadband.

"evil hackers" very seldom target any specific machine. They launch worms and trojans that attack machines indiscriminately and cannot tell dial-up from broadband.

Dial-up may be less valuable to a botnet, but it is also easier to attack since it very seldom is protected by a hardware firewall/router, usually is less secure [patched] and usually has unsophisticated users.

-- Robert

Reply to
Robert Redelmeier

Windows (and Mac OS X) Update!

Reply to
Axel Hammerschmidt

Dialup is designed to work over POTS (plain old telephone service). There are millions of analog telephones in service all over the US -- replacing copper with fiber won't change that.

With fiber in the loop, some sort of D-to-A conversion must happen before the loop hits the jack in your wall, because as far as I know, your average telephone user has no plans to replace all the handsets in his or her home. So, as long as you can draw dialtone from the RJ-11 jacks in your wall, analog modems should work.

I think at one time back in the early 90s, certain subscriber line carriers would not support modems, but I think those have been fixed.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm mistaken.

Reply to
Fred Goodwin, CMA

I have a laptop with an Athlon 64 and it has a dialup modem, in addition to Ethernet, wi-fi, etc.

Reply to
Cyrus Afzali

That won't last much longer as the dialup modem follows with the same demise as vinyl records and laser disks. CDs and DVDs will be the next to die when memory gets a bit cheaper - everything will be static memory modules before long and eventually it will all be electronically shared via broadband and any other transmission media they come up with and there won't be much need for carrying storage around.

Reply to
$Bill

If you travel internationally, especially outside Western Europe and a few other places, you'll find that you'll indeed need your modem for a while.

CDs may die, to be replaced by something with higher storage capacity, but I sincerely doubt people are going to be putting RAID-like systems in their living rooms. If you don't have that type of redundancy, disk-based systems are fraught with issues.

Reply to
Cyrus Afzali

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