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The next time you get frustrated because a website refuses to loadinstantly, or a streaming video has to buffer for a few seconds,think of the surprisingly large number of Canadians still ondial-up. National Capital FreeNet executive director, Ross Kouhi, right,says many people choose dial-up internet because they can't affordhigh-speed. (CBC) According to a few different estimates, there are hundreds ofthousands of Canadians still travelling the informationsuperhighway in the slow lane, who only get online after waitingfor a series of bleeps, piercing shrieks and blurts of static to bebelted out by their dial-up modem. And that s just the beginning of their waiting. It s pretty dramatic, says Ross Kouhi, executive director forthe National Capital FreeNet, a donation-driven service thatprovides free or inexpensive dial-up access to about 3,600 users inthe Ottawa area. As you re demonstrating it to somebody it s always a littlesurprising to see just how slow things load. The CRTC estimated that in 2010, there were about 366,000 dial-upcustomers across the country. The Convergence Consulting Group saysresidential dial-up subscriptions went from well over a million in2007 to about 250,000 at the end of 2011. And surveys by the MediaTechnology Monitor suggested about three per cent of the populationwas using dial-up Internet in 2011. For some Canadians in rural communities, dial-up is the only waythey can get online. In 2010, the CRTC estimated that five per centof the population had no access to high-speed internet, with thatrate nearing 16 per cent in rural areas. But for others,inexpensive dial-up is simply the only affordable alternative tohigh-speed access, which can start at $30 or more and it susually more a month. 5 minutes to load home page With most of the population using increasingly efficient high-speedaccounts, web developers have largely stopped trying to optimizetheir sites for slower connections. Sports fans on dial-up would have a hard time loading up theToronto Blue Jays official website, which weighs in at a whoppingfour megabytes thanks to embedded video and a large number ofphotos and graphics. During a test, it took a couple of minutes ofwaiting for just the home page s background to load, and severalmore minutes for other content to gradually pop up. Other graphic-heavy sites run by TSN and NHL aren t much better,with the home page adding up to more than a megabyte of content which could take about five minutes or longer for a dial-up user toload. Kouhi says there s still plenty of demand for inexpensive dial-upaccess, although few rave about the service s speed and the websurfing experience. A lot of people who were making due with dial-up are starting tofind it s getting more and more difficult to use, says Kouhi,adding that it takes just a few minutes on dial-up for him to growtired of the snail-paced speeds. Some of the dial-up users he speaks with say they mostly stay offthe web and only use email to connect with family and friends. Buteven email can be annoying on dial-up, especially when attachmentsare involved. Kouhi has a sister who lives in a rural area and until recentlyonly had dial-up access. His family learned to leave her out ofgroup emails when it came to sharing photos, he says. You always have to remember to not send the big pictures to theone sister, to save her the grief, because she would say it wouldtake her all night to download a big pile of photographs, Kouhisays. And she d come back in the morning and they weren t anythingshe wanted to see anyways. The e-commerce company in China offers quality products such as Elm Obd Interface , Vag Diagnostic Equipment, and more. For more , please visit Vag Diagnostic Equipment today!
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