There may be no national broadband plan and the digital divide may be as deep as ever, but there's enough available broadband bandwidth that Cox Communications has pulled the plug on its back-up dial-up connection service citing "declining usage" as the primary reason.
Cox users had been able to get up to 20 hours of free dial-up a month to back up the company's "always-on" broadband connection. The package came in handy primarily when traveling but was also occasionally needed when the cable went out. Effective Sept. 1, though, it's all over. Users have enough access to an ever-expanding pool of free WiFi and 3G connectivity that dial-up backup is just an unnecessary luxury.
A letter from Cox to users said, in effect, that things have changed and the MSO needs to "focus our resources on other priorities, such as increasing our Internet speeds and providing additional new services."
For more:
- DSL Reports has this story
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