Goodbye dial-up

[marcjacob]

Looks like UK ISP's are getting rid of dial-up, or at least non-subscription dial-up. My Mum was told she had to pay £10 a month to stay on dial-up, but broadband is only £12 a month, so she told me to find her a broadband deal.

This could be a good move as alot of my traffic is UK based and that means many more people on faster connections. Would be great if the US/Canadian companies make the same move.

[HunkMoneyLuke]

thats pretty neat news, yeah totally agree it would be good to get more UK credit-card holding surfers on fast internet :)

[marcjacob]

I think my mum is joining the revolution today. Better late than never I guess.

[gaydemon_jr]

Simon, you can probably get broadband for less than a tenner actually too...

If you are on O2, you can get their Home Broadband (http://broadband.o2.co.uk/home/index.jsp) for £7.34 upwards.

Plus, if you sign up via Quidco (http://www.quidco.com), you can get cashback.

Also, Sky do broadband for cheap when you are already a customer... they are also on Quidco.

[marcjacob]

Well she gets the entire package from Sky (TV that is) and pays £47 a month. With £11 BT line rental, I reckon if Sky's all in one deal includes line rental she is getting the broadband for 50p extra a month. They charge £58.50 for the top TV, 2 meg broadband and phone. I told her to give them a call as they won't speak to me. If that deal includes line rental it's a nice deal for her. The others do higher speeds but she won't be downloading much so it's not a problem.

I tried to get her to try and cancel the Sky to get a "retention" deal and maybe a free upgrade to Sky+ but she thinks that's dishonest. I used to work for Virgin Media in retentions, and people do it all the time.

I tried to get her a mobile dongle as that's pay as you go but in her street they don't cover it. In the next street along they do. She in a dip at the bottom of a valley. Very annoying :grrr:

[gaydemon_jr]

Yeah. I rang Sky and threatened to leave, so they took over the line rental and gave me that for free. This year I have broadband at half price. It is always worth trying, as you know. Worst case scenario they go to cancel your package, you back down and say you need to think about it.

[marcjacob]

Yeah. I rang Sky and threatened to leave, so they took over the line rental and gave me that for free. This year I have broadband at half price. It is always worth trying, as you know. Worst case scenario they go to cancel your package, you back down and say you need to think about it.

That's what I think but she thinks it's dishonest.

I used to get the same people calling on the day their deal expired to get it re-newed. Once people catch on that you can do this they have no problems taking full advantage of it. I used to prefer those calls as they were an easy save which meant easy commision for me.

[gaydemon]

Just wish the broadband we have was at least half decent. It can be quite slow and mine never really goes above 4.5mb even if I'm paying for a 7mb connection. They dont seem to have any intentions of upgrading our area to the new 20mb connections either. :no:

[basschick]

i think it would make sense here here in the u.s. to at least offer slow broadband here for $10 and that they would get RID of dialup entirely. i mean, what's the point of it?

[marcjacob]

I agree actually. The sooner dial up goes the better. It's really bad in terms of value for money. Far too expensive for the little it is.

[Daniel]

I moved flats the other day, and I found the USB dongles one can get these days are much better than dialup. Probably a little more expensive, but certainly worth it in terms of speeds, although I am not sure of the speeds outside of London in the UK. I think I would probably go without internet or maybe use my phone for a few days rather than resort to dialup these days.

[marcjacob]

My mobile only gets 20kbps unless it's hooked up to WiFi :grrr:

The dongles are only for laptops arn't they? I know my Mum can't get 3G signals from her house.

[RDude]

Dial up still exists? LOL. I though it went to the wayside years ago. I don't even know if we still have it here in Canada or not. It's mostly DSL and WiFi on the West Coast for us from what I can see.

Why is the UK still so far behind in the internet race? 7Mbps? We've had the option of 15Mbps for over 2 years now. I get about 12-13Mbps on average.

Unless I was in a real bind, Dial Up wouldn't even be an option for me. Paying 10 pounds a month - which is almost $20 CAD - for Dial Up is a horrible deal. This is the 21st century for crying out loud.

Our current package for standard cable TV and DSL internet is $65 a month. I can live with that.

[marcjacob]

The top package in the UK is about 20 mbps. BT invested badly in their teck which does hold us back a bit. I believe the government are looking at this issue now.