Dial-Up Blues
Dial-up providers commonly offer software-based accelerators to help speed things up, either for free or at an extra charge. Only 30 percent of the dial-up respondents who are aware of an accelerator and use it are very happy with it, however. Also, acceleration boosts speeds by only about 20 to 50 percent at a cost to the customer that often approaches the price of DSL, yet DSL increases speed from 1000 to 2000 percent over dial-up.
Yankee Group analyst Mahoney says, "That's why accelerated dial-up makes sense only for the $10-a-month providers, who are seeing significant uptake for the extra-cost accelerated options." According to Mahoney, "the premium dial-up services of AOL and EarthLink are basically surviving off customers who don't think about their provider or service, and just keep paying every month."
Augustine Sodaro is one of the many America Online loyalists who can see no reason to change services. He runs an on-the-spot automobile dent removal business from his home in Maryville, Tennessee. Sodaro and his wife have been AOL customers since 2000 and use the service for e-mail, Web research, and buying and selling items on EBay. "I needed a user-friendly connection," says Sodaro. "I looked at MSN, BellSouth, and several others, and AOL seemed to be the most user-friendly. The layout is easy to understand and doesn't take long to navigate. If there were something wrong with AOL, I might look at NetZero or PeoplePC, but so far I haven't had any reason to do so," he says. Sodaro also gives good marks to AOL's technical support, saying he's been satisfied the two times he's had to contact AOL about a problem.
Even though our survey shows that, on average, dial-up users are less satisfied overall than their broadband counterparts, many of the folks using dial-up told us they were unlikely to switch providers anytime soon. And according to Yankee Group's Mahoney, they're not all that eager to switch to a broadband service, either, despite the fact that the majority of them have broadband options available. The reason: dial-up's low cost.
Dial-up isn't going away, but people moving to broadband speak glowingly about their new service, regardless of which technology they have adopted. Take Catherine Genna, for example. The lactation consultant from Woodhaven, New York, switched to Covad's DSL service two years ago. "With broadband, we can download amazingly huge files," Genna says. "Three weeks ago, I got some ultrasound videos in just minutes. Being able to communicate with people at the forefront of business around the world aids how well I'm able to teach and help my clients locally." Genna states further that the absence of problems with her DSL service is as important to her as the technology's fast transmission speeds.
