I'm still on dialup, a personal mini-rebellion, for one very good reason,
Australians are getting seriously ripped off!
There was a news report a few months back of a worldwide study(wish I could find it
) that basically said that Australians had the worst broadband in the world for speed and price.
It's kinda like with petrol, if everyone bought from the cheapest station, all the other stations would lose business and then there would be a price war for who's got the cheapest petrol.
Unfortunatelly, the number of people that just don't care enough(the ones that whinge about high petrol prices but do nothing to actually go out of their way to buy the cheapest, the same people that pay $5 for a bottle of coke from the same station!
), means we all get ripped off.
I always buy from the cheapest station in my area(listed on Fuelwatch website 24h before), even if I actually get no benefit because I have to drive further to get it, they are rewarded for their low price by getting my custom.
I haven't seen a single broadband service that is realistic, so dialup it is.
My dialup is cheap($20), unlimited(how much can you DL/month on 56k? hahaha, tho I still sometimes get over 2gig), no-contract(pay-by-the-month) and was that way loooong before broadband came on the scene, so is not due to it becoming an 'obsolete' service.
Contract are, in my mind, anti-competetive nature, it restricts people going to a better service... How many times have I read/heard "as soon as my contract is over..."
If everyone boycotted broadband because we're forced to have download limits, 12/24month contracts, hidden costs etc. the providers would have to do some drastic measures to get customers, possibly even going to a similar structure to that which existed in the dialup days, but alas, no-one cares enough.
Too many people just pay-n-play.
/end rant
edit: Before anyone asks, my mobile phone is also on a cheap($10) no-contract(pay-by-the-month) 'plan'.
edit2: Just checked my usage, 2.55Gig so far this month... on 56k.