70% of Americans connect to the Internet over much faster broadband. The average U.S. broadband speed is 11.4 Megabits per second. That’s 200 times faster than dial-up’s 56 Kilobits per second. Even smartphones are more than 100 times faster than that.
Nowadays, the most popular websites are layered with data-gobbling software add-ons that slow down your experience. Facebook has videos that automatically play themselves. YouTube displays interactive advertisements with buttons. Twitter is full of GIFs — moving images that are a few seconds long and repeat endlessly.
The average AOL dial-up user is paying $20 a month — a dollar more than last year. But if you crunch the numbers, that means some people are actually paying more than $20 a month to get dial-up Internet from AOL. And it would take these people about four minutes to download this popular GIF of an old man dancing at a party. 32% of dial-up users said they couldn’t afford to upgrade. Most of the rest said broadband either wasn’t available — or they just didn’t care to change. The numbers from AOL show these people are stubborn. AOL counted 4.6 million dial-up users in 2010, and only 500,000 people or so leave every year. At this rate there will still be people using dial up in the year 2019
Source: money.cnn.com bgr.com, on.aol.com