Dial-up access obsolete
Using dial-up access for Internet connectivity is the most expensive option available to users. This is according to well-known Internet researcher, Arthur Goldstuck, who recently released his latest book, titled "The Mobile Office".
Goldstuck says in the book that just because subscription rates for dial-up access are generally lower than broadband accounts doesn’t mean that dial-up access is in fact cheaper.
Goldstuck says that according to research done by his company, World Wide Worx,
– A business using dial-up would have to spend just 18 minutes per working day on dial-up to justify moving to a basic ADSL service;
– For a residential user who is also online weekends, daily usage that would justify ADSL is even lower: 16 minutes;
– For 3G for small businesses, the dial-up time that justifies moving over comes down to 12 minutes;
– And for iBurst, it is half a minute.
"Our Internet and SME research always indicated that dial-up was a dying technology among small businesses, but the scale of the savings offered by mobile broadband that came out of our new analysis was a shock," says Goldstuck.
Goldstuck says that dial-up access is obsolete both in terms of utility and in terms of cost. It is unsustainable, and broadband must now become the default for Internet access in South Africa, he says.
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