Dial-up Internet surviving despite broadband access

The continuing use of dial-up Internet access by more than 100,000 Canadians, despite the CRTC’s assertion that broadband is now available to almost every household in the country, shows the limits of access targets, according to telecom lawyer Tamir Israel. Israel, staff lawyer with the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, said in a phone interview on Wednesday that the continuing use of dial-up shows that universal access doesn’t translate into more usage. “Access is a relative term,” he said. “In some rural areas, you're talking about satellite Internet, which can be spotty in terms of the quality of the link. It might be a bit faster, but it might not even be dramatically better than dial-up.” CRTC numbers from the regulator’s latest communications monitoring report, released in September 2013, showed 78 per cent of households had high-speed Internet in 2012, with “almost all Canadians” having access to basic broadband with a speed of at least 1.5 Mbps. The same document shows 183,000 Canadians had dial-up connections to access the Internet in 2012 and the number is falling by an average of 30 per cent per year, compared with 10.8 million on high-speed cable or DSL connections. In 2012, dial-up accounted for $43 million in revenue in the telecom industry, the CRTC report said. Tom Copeland, founder of southern Ontario ISP Eagle.ca and chairman of the Canadian Association of Internet Providers, said despite the broadband services his company offers, he still has “several dozen” customers on a monthly dial-up plan with a minimum cost of $5. “Some of these people only keep it so they can reach out to family and friends on an irregular basis,” he said. “We've made that ridiculously easy for them at $5 a month.” He said Eagle.ca made the conscious decision to stop selling dial-up this week, and that providing the service and maintaining the infrastructure for only a small number of users made dial-up unprofitable at least “three or four years ago.” “It's definitely a dying service, and the primary reason it's still living is the cost of high speed,” he said. “Broadband costs are still the biggest impediment to adoption; it's not availability.” Bill St. Arnaud, an independent telecom analyst, said in a phone interview on Wednesday that dial-up users are mostly those on limited incomes or older people less attached to new technology. “Many of these people will have dial-up at home just for the occasional email and then go down to the local library or a Starbucks to do more serious downloads or browse for any other information they need,” he said. St. Arnaud said dial-up is also used in rural communities where wireline broadband may be unavailable and alternatives such as satellite and local wireless connections are prohibitively expensive. He said the CRTC’s plan to have access to a reliable broadband connection with a speed of at least 5 Mbps for 95 per cent of Canadian households by the end of this year, detailed in March, won’t guarantee any new uptake. Israel said the CRTC target is only one part of the strategy that will be necessary to bring more Canadians onto broadband. He pointed to the CRTC’s basic service obligations for telephone providers, which include provisions that control the cost of dial-up Internet and provide a way to subsidize high infrastructure costs in rural areas. “It's expensive to build Internet in these areas, and it's comparably expensive to build telephone wires out,” he said. “I think everyone agrees that the ideal is to get everyone using the Internet because it improves quality of life for everyone as well as economic opportunities. “It's definitely not cut-and-paste from the phone regime to this,” he added. “But there's definitely historical precedent for a heavier regulatory hand in terms of price, quality of service and accessibility in these areas where there's less incentive to build out and less competition.” In February, rural broadband providers told The Wire Report that affordability was key for expanding Internet access in Canada’s remote regions. — With reporting by Peter Henderson at phenderson@thewirereport.ca and editing by Derek Abma at dabma@thewirereport.ca

Dial-up Internet surviving despite broadband access

News | May 7, 2014

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Dial-up Internet surviving despite broadband access

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