That time I realized how many people actually used dial-up until like 2005

I was digging through some old archives from the Wayback Machine the other night, looking at a GeoCities page I made back in 1998 for my band. And I got curious about how many people were still on dial-up when broadband started rolling out. Found a stat from the Pew Research Center that said 40% of US homes were still using dial-up in 2002. That blew my mind because I remember feeling like I was the only one left on 56k after 2001 or so. But then I thought about how slow DSL was in smaller towns like where my cousin lived in rural Nebraska. He didn't get cable internet until 2006. So it makes sense now why those old forums stayed active for so long, everybody was still waiting for pages to load. Has anyone else come across a stat like that which totally rearranged your memory of how things really were back then?

2 comments

2 Comments

robert2751mo ago

Ngl that 40% number in 2002 is wild. I remember being so jealous of my friend who got DSL in 2001 and he could load a webpage in like 2 seconds. Makes me realize my memory of "everyone having fast internet" was just me hanging out in the suburbs where cable rolled out early.

maryadams1mo ago

Everyone having fast internet" is a good way to put it because I remember feeling like a caveman sitting there listening to the modem screech. My memory says dial-up died in like 2000 but then I remember my cousin in a small town couldn't even get DSL until 2007, so we were basically living in different centuries. The real mind-bender is thinking about how many people were still waiting for a single webpage to load while I was already complaining about my DSL being too slow. I guess my memory just conveniently forgot that most of the country was still stuck in 1998 until George Bush was almost done being president.