Dial-up is slower than it was

IanFogg | July 10, 2007, 03:10 PM

OK, so the title is a tiny bit misleading. The spirit of the title is correct, if not the letter:

Dial-up Internet access feels slower than it used to because web site designers are used to building for the broadband-connected majority. Page sizes on existing sites have crept up and this penalizes dial-up users. Technically, of course, dial-up operates at exactly the same speeds as five years ago.

The speed that matters for PC Internet access is the experience and not the technology: subjective speed, not objective speed. It's the same concept I wrote about for mobile phones and handhelds recently (and more here).

What are the impacts?

Devices that expect dial-up speeds (e.g. including GPRS or Edge) to be good enough for consumers now, because the same objective speed was acceptable five years ago, are making a shaky assumption.

Consumers that remain on dial-up Internet access at home are experiencing an Internet that feels slower than it did. And that assumes they remain browsing the same sites they always have. If they are tempted by Youtube, Dailymotion, Flickr, or any of the real broadband sites then those parts of the Internet will either slow right down or become a no go area. ISPs have another opportunity here to communicate why that small number of consumers remaining on dial-up must switch to broadband.