Half of mobile phone users get online with their device

Read here.

 

I think most smart phones have the capability, but a lot of folks can't afford the extra charges to run the internet, email etc. Typically $85-$90 a month. If it was included in the base price of service everybody would use the internet on their phones.

 

That's true but how do they get connected otherwise? Via an expensive Internet connection to their home with another expensive device (PC, notebook, tablet)?

The recurring costs of services is the problem. It cost a lot more to have the Internet in your home via cable or DSL AND on your phone via your cell provider than it does to have Internet access from just one source.

This is exactly why sales of PCs have dropped dramatically over last few years. People are downsizing to handhelds.

 

And I suspect that a lot of the people that are downsizing never needed a PC in the first place. I saw a lot of people jump on the PC bandwagon when Windows 95 came out because everyone was using email and the internet. Some people never needed any capabilities beyond that. The downsized devices give them the ability to do that without the complication of PC maintenance.

They add internet capability to these phones so they can charge for data plans. The cell phone providers in this country are disgusting. I pay as much per month for my phone service as I do for all of my household utilities combined.

 

With 95? I think you are off by a few years and couple versions of Windows. Broadband did not even "start" reaching homes in mass until ~2000 and it was broadband to the home that triggered the biggest growth in Internet to the home. And while Windows 95 supported TCP/IP, networking support was limited to Novel, Banyan Vines, and the like - that is, for local networking. Most users did not even have personal email accounts, or access to the Internet - except through work.

The "Internet" back in 95 was barely a toddler. Dial-up was still the primary means most users used to access the Internet. In fact, broadband did not surpass dial up until 2002!

By far, people back then where buying computers so they could do word processing - phenomenal software that allowed users to edit their documents instead of using white-out, typewriters and mimeographs.

XP - based on Windows NT, was the first Windows designed from the ground level for "home" users to access the internet.

They add Internet because users demand it. But I agree they charge way too much but that is not unique to this country.

 

Well you can get a voice plan + data here where i live for as low as 20$ monthly. (With taxes like 21$)

 

In 1997 I bought my first computer with WIN95. The first thing I did was sign up on AOL so I could get dial up internet. Remember upgrades that took half a day to download, and half way through you'd lose your connection and it would take a half hour to dial up your AOL again to resume the upgrade? All this with 15mb of RAM.

 

I used to download things on dial up and there were many times that when the download was almost finishing i lost connection and i had to redo like 4hours+ of download . . .

 

I certainly remember 150 baud dial up modems and "bulletin boards" - way before the Internet, websites or Windows - or Microsoft, for that matter. That was back in the early to mid 80s. I was the first to get 300Baud, then first again (at a small fortune I might add) to get 1200Baud - still 1/10th of a snail's pace compared to today's broadband speeds.

And most infuriating was "Call Waiting" a new fangled feature the phone companies were pushing out that beeped when you had another call come in. Great! Except at first you could not disable it, and even when you could, you had to remember to enter *70 before dialing. If not, every time someone "beeped in", it would knock the modem off-line.

Probably 16Mb, but point taken. I started (dial up - not computing) with 64. 64Kb not Mb!

And for nostalgia sake: http://www.freesound.org/people/Jlew/sounds/16475/

 

I disagree. People were using AOL, MSN, etc. on Windows 95, 98, 98SE, and ME, by the tens of millions long before XP and broadband came about.

 

That depended on the modem - I never got disconnected from call waiting, but I had friends who did.

I remember the days of using dialup and having 4 hours session limits, after which you were disconnected and had to dial again, which cost a bit - something like 20 or 25 cents to dial up, and was doing this 6 times a day. Due to having a bad phone line (alhough it worked fine for voice calls) I used to get less about 27k out of my 56k modem, making it painfully slow.

 

I agree with you that many of the home buyers of the day did indeed buy Windows 95 to use email and the Internet. I did not mean to suggest that was not true. Sorry for implying it did. But I beg to differ on their numbers. The number of households with computers vs without was still very small, and most did not have broadband - and maybe not even cable TV. And dial-up was too slow and unreliable.

Note the most prolific method viruses spread was by "sneakernet" - people hand-carried infected disks in from home.

It is true, AOL, in one form or another has been around since the Commodore 64 days (hence my 64Kb comment), it was by no means "tens of millions" (unless you count company and Government owned computers).

Note in the History of AOL (As told by AOL New Releases) AOL "in the home" only passed 1 million subscribers in late 1994. TCP/IP support did not start until well into 1994 - and at that point, AOL was the leading ISP. Yahoo only started in 1994. MSN did not begin until 1995.

Computers in 1995 cost a fortune. And bi-directional data processing was not fully implemented by the cable companies until the late 90s (since cable TV is just one way).

Email and the Internet was still pretty much an enthusiast thing, or something needed for work. That all changed when broadband to the home became affordable.

 

That they did. $2,000 for a Pentium 133 MHz with 8MB of RAM, a 1 GB hard drive, a 6x CD-ROM and a 28.8 modem. With a 14 inch monitor. But my MSN account was only $6.95 per month with a $19.99 unlimited option. The cell carriers all dropped unlimited for a crummy 3 GB for $30 plan. I can use WiFi but now I am reminded of the fact that it is costing me $100 a month for internet on my phone (data plan plus home internet). Heck, bring back the $20 AOL.

 

Fairly new to the online with the mobile phone scene but went with a pay for your phone at full price and for that I get plenty of talk minutes (much more then I need actually) unlimited text (which i rarely do) and unlimited data (which I find myself doing more and more with Android) all for 45 bucks a month. Not to bad in my book. I've already saved more then the initial cost of the phone with the lower price on the monthly service which I've had zero problems with. All in all happy with my choice.

 

My dial up connection always dropped when there was an incoming call . . . I always went on rage mode when that happened.
I still remember when i was downloading Age of Empires II Demo on dial up . . . i was just a couple megabytes away of finishing the download when the connection dropped . . . I never tried to download it again HAHAHAHAHA

 

There is no extra charge if you use your WiFi on DSL, unless one insists on using either G3 or G4.

I run on WiFi 6 phones, 6 tablets, 8 laptops, 2 desktop (fixed WLAN) with DSL connection and this only cost me $50 per month.

Where did you get the above information from?

Best regards,