Customers subscribing to dial-up internet have dropped so low in the UK that Britain’s biggest internet service provider has officially shut the service down. Multinational telecommunications service provider BT has over 6.7 million internet subscribers in the UK, but broadband is the connection of choice for the vast majority of its clients.
Anyone who remembers the switch from dial-up to broadband internet connections will know about the advantages broadband offers over its predecessor, speed being the number one advantage. Dial up modems have a connection speed of a maximum 56 kbit/second, which seems almost prehistoric for broadband users who have grown accustomed to average speeds closer to 8.2 Mbps in the United States.
Indeed, it may seem unimaginable to broadband users that dial up connections are still used at all, but for some people in remote locations, dial up is the only connection available. Since broadband connections can degrade over long distances, dial-up is the only real option for some people, and there are not enough of these people for the service to be profitable to large companies. BT estimate that of their cancelled dial up connections, around 1000 people live in areas too remote for a broadband connection.
