AOL's ancient, frustrating, noisy dial-up Internet seems like something that only exists on a BuzzFeed "90s Kids" list these days, but AOL's quarterly earnings report reveal there are still 2.1 million people who use the service. Yes, million. These pour souls are still stuck with 56 Kilobits per second, 200 times slower than average broadband and 100 times slower than smartphones.
According to a 2009 Pew survey, 32 percent of users say they've stuck with dial-up because it's too expensive. They get a pass. Ditto for the 17 percent of people who aren't in areas where broadband is available. That leaves 51 percent of people on dial-up who are content using basic bitch Internet. They're just like, "Fuck it, I'm cool with living in 1995." Porn is out of the question for these people. Loading a simple naughty photo looks like this:
1.
The average dial-up user is paying $20 per month, which includes those who have lowered their price by threatening to quit. So some people are paying more than $20 each month for a laughably slow connection. And at a rate of only 500,000 people leaving per year, this will continue for at least four more years.
[via CNN]
