Brutkey

stgiga (they/them) :polygender_verify:
@stgiga@blahaj.zone

@Tooden@aus.social @ernie@writing.exchange @mattl@social.coop

Devastating for the poorest and/or most remote people. Yet another large company choosing to harm the vulnerable people in society.

If they really cared about technological advancements, they might try and enter into the rural ISP market in underserved areas and given THOSE people DSL that is mostly transmitted as fiber (barring national parks, and California already has decent WiFi even at remote state parks without cell service, so next time you say WiFi Calling is useless, it isn't, and it can literally save lives), and at a rate FAR, FAR cheaper than a T/E-carrier, rather than literally cutting the phone lines. It's better to get America Online rather than America Offline. Another popular user of dialup is farmers. Especially the organic grass-fed beef farmers, because you need to be secluded enough to have enough land to feed cows.

Another chilling effect this change may have is that with a popular dialup provider gone, sites may start caring even less about bandwidth, and this is a problem because it of course can mean more ads, but even if it doesn't, there are still other types of last-line Internet options which have users and are still limited to dial-up speeds.

Iridium GO satellite modems are basically satellite phones that do dial-up internet, and they are 2400bps since they emulate doing pre-Circuit-Switched-Data on a satellite phone back in the 1990s. These are used for emergencies (use FrogFind if you will) and if you are hiking or on a boat you can, statistically, afford. It's often boats that have some form of living on them where you start to see better options than an Iridium GO and a modest laptop or smartphone, but again, not everyone is capable of affording something like Starlink. Of note is that even though Dish/DirecTV DO support use of their network for internet via Dishnet and whatever DirecTV currently calls theirs (especially after the recent merger), my local telephone company ran by a criminal at one point banned them from serving us. Not to mention, while using their portable camping RV dishes or something like a VuCube with their satellite modems IS possible, satellite TV requires that the receiver be stationary due to how the orbit works. So satellite TV modems on a boat don't work, and HughesNet uses that type of dish to do broadband at home. Iridium's higher-tier satellites used by industry and government hit similar speeds but are usually out of vans. Many boats don't quite reach the electrical power of a van because unless solar is involved, regeneration isn't an option unless the boat has a motor and an alternator, which is also costly. At some point, your tricked-out sailboat starts heading into proto-yacht territory, the point at which a Linux HTPC on board starts seeming possible. And yes, the relevant distro accounts for local storage more than it does actual internet use, even though Linux isn't nearly as unfriendly to modems or other legacy stuff as Windows and Macs are. Basically, if you're on a boat and can't afford Starlink or the hardware needed to power it, you have satellite dialup at 2400bps using acoustic coupler max speed despite one not being involved.

Dialup over amateur radio IS real, and it IS used in locales where an amateur radio license is something you use when even a CB radio doesn't cut it and you're very secluded and already have the license, and every provider around you is shit. If anything, this cut may make people around my level of rural get a license if desperate. It is a method used as a last-line measure. And it shows.

Basically, you can still run into situations where dialup speeds are involved with internet that doesn't even involve POTS. The rustic areas of the world can bring you wonders.

Remember how I mentioned Circuit-Switched Data, the oldest form of 2G other than acoustic couplers? Well, the fastest that went was 33.6kbps, and Japan, a tech hub, only got rid of it in 2020. Modern cell phones still support 2G. And there are MANY nations FAR less developed and rich than even the cheapest and most rural areas of Japan. Somewhere like India, Africa, or rural China, among other Eurasian nations. As well as the Outback in the Southern Hemisphere, or anywhere in Central and South America that isn't part of a major city.

Circuit-Switched Data, mobile 9600/14400 baud up to 33.6kbps dial-up Internet will be with us for several more decades, in areas that people DO travel to. So even in the future, phones will still be emulating a below-56K dialup call as a last-ditch method of mobile internet, and this COULD save a life.

Not to mention that, to borrow Cathode Ray Dude's analogy, if you're a paper mill in rural Ohio, the only way you can phone home data to your headquarters in another state is liable to be a phone line not maintained since the 1910s that has seen better days and may have existed since before the Panel Switch or dial service. Theoretically if it hasn't been maintained that long, it may even have glass insulators. Basically, that phone line is going to sound like a Wind Tunnel Power Mac G4 full of dust. So 56K is just the maximum.

And now the modern Internet is a sea or firehose of excessive bandwidth, no matter how much Zopfli-Krzymod and other pre-optimization and minification you throw at it unless you're clever. And we have sites actively serving ads.

ALSO, interlaced images may be larger, but they are often used by charity websites since images that load downwards show an incomplete scene. Meanwhile interlaced images load in full size but come into focus as more data is received. This is also handy if what the images are of is something that is better to know exists in frame from the start. Not to mention that if the images you send are entertaining, people on slow or unreliable connections can start to get the picture better.

My original internet connection was 2Mbps DSL through our awful local telephone company until 2015, when we got 24Mbps through our previously-flaky cable company my family used in my youngest years during the days in which DOCSIS sucked. Our ISP got bought out and we now have a gigabit with 2Gbps about a few dollars more. But for context, the maximum Minecraft server player count at 2Mbps is 10. I also had to deal with files over 200MiB taking the entire evening to download. My underfunded schools had frequent Internet issues. And of note is that our area is best served by AT&T for cell service but they were banned from offering home Internet. I know unlocked phones of either type work for us with our AT&T SIM cards, meanwhile the people on other carriers have previously had issues with our region's internet. And even AT&T doesn't work at some of our neighbors. Of note is that our DSL would randomly and frequently go out, and at 9 years old I was frequently resetting our modem and routers, both of which we went through often. My grandparents on their AT&T landline DSL also had horrible Internet, and to this day the fiber they get from them in their new city house is still shit.
We are talking like 2011 when I was 9 btw (and I since 6 had been doing amazing tech feats). Some computers at my school then even ran Win9x. But they got iPads at the last year I was there before bullies drove me out. Basically, DSL is horrible at reliability, and so all the people in my county stuck with it are irate, and under the people they, statistically, went for, they won't get any help. Meanwhile I as President would mass-develop ALL non-protected rural areas in the United States to ensure no kid grows up without good, solid infrastructure or StreetPass ever again. I resent the fact I grew up in an unincorporated high-fire-danger area of rural California full to the brim of Confederates and N@zs with horrible infrastructure, internet included, with frequent blackouts and only volunteer fire departments, but at least our HOA government isn't scum. /?