Open Source: Do any North Carolinians still use dial-up internet?

Brian Gordon
·6 min read

I’m Brian Gordon, tech reporter for The News & Observer, and this is Open Source, a weekly newsletter of business, labor and technology in North Carolina.

919-719-5295

Dial that number, and you’ll hear a remnant from an earlier internet. It’s the drawn-out beeps and screeches of a dial-up modem. The sounds are like an arcade game mixed with a car crash. It may spark nostalgia, but it’s not pleasant.

While grabbing coffee with a friend earlier this week, he mentioned an internet provider called NetZero might still offer dial-up service in the Triangle. I was shocked, but sure enough, the company lists several access numbers with 919 area codes. I called NetZero, and after a long hold, a representative told me dial-up service could be mine if I had an active land line (I don’t).

But is anyone in North Carolina still using dial-up? And if so, why?

Before broadband, dial-up service was how most people got online. According to data from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, dial-up usage peaked in the early 2000s at 44.5 million households.

As anyone older than Gen Z knows, dial-up didn’t let you talk on the phone and use the internet at the same time, as it required a traditional phone line to connect to the outside internet. Very frustrating, especially when your sister wouldn’t get off the phone.

But the dial-up industry started to crater around 2002 — and for good reason. Alternatives arrived that were simply better. Today, there’s fixed wireless and satellite. As for wired options that run directly into homes, people might use digital subscriber lines (DSL), coaxial cables, or fiber.

Each has its drawbacks, but one thing they share is being less obsolete than dial-up.

“I’m not sure who would find (dial-up) to be a good alternative,” said Mark Johnson, a former chief technology officer at MCNC, a Research Triangle Park nonprofit that supports broadband access in North Carolina. “I can’t think of an obvious reason. You can get a low-end smart phone that will get you internet service.”

Yet some North Carolina residents appear to still be using dial-up.

The North Carolina Department of Information Technology runs an ongoing broadband survey, and it updates the results daily. Out of 97,700 total responses, 434 said they use dial-up. That’s 0.4% of respondents. For context, more than 10 times as many North Carolinians said they had no internet at all.

With such a small sample size, it’s difficult to identify dial-up trends. However, great numbers of people in the rural, mountainous counties of Western North Carolina said they had dial-up than in the more populous core Triangle counties of Wake, Durham, and Orange. For example, Buncombe County (home of Asheville) had 24 respondents say dial-up. Wake County only had nine.

According to federal data, 6,760 North Carolina residents were using dial-up service at their homes as of November 2021. That statistic was brought to my attention by reporter Jeremy Markovich, who writes the offbeat newsletter North Carolina Rabbit Hole.

If you know someone still using dial-up, please let me know. You can email or call — or probably do both at the same time.

The Center of Digital Equity is working to bring critically needed technology, computers and digital literacy to residents in Mecklenburg County.
The Center of Digital Equity is working to bring critically needed technology, computers and digital literacy to residents in Mecklenburg County.

Delaware remains the corporate king

Duke Energy and Bank of America have their headquarters in Charlotte while Pendo, Bandwidth and First Citizens Bank are in Raleigh.

Yet these well-known North Carolina companies, and many others, actually incorporate in another state: Delaware.

The small coastal state is the go-to place for company formation. Delaware has more business entities (1.8 million) than residents (1 million). It’s home to two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies and scores of startups.

Why?

In short: courts, taxes, privacy and laws.

North Carolina is working to keep up. The Tar Heel State has grown its business court considerably since a single judge launched it 25 years ago. And several major companies like PepsiCo, Truist, Lowe’s incorporate here today.

But overall, Delaware remains the corporation king. And it’s not very close.

Charlotte-based Bank of America is one of many North Carolina companies that are incorporated in Delaware.
Charlotte-based Bank of America is one of many North Carolina companies that are incorporated in Delaware.

Google Fiber says it’s disrupting less

After a years-long pause, Google Fiber is again growing in the Triangle, and neighbors are bracing for construction disruptions.

“There’s going to be hiccups,” Hillsborough Mayor Jenn Weaver told me. “This is what we’ve seen from our neighboring communities that have gone through this.”

Since making a big entrance in 2015, Google Fiber slowed development after residents complained of damaged utility lines and long installation times.

“If we have a vision for fiber-optic ubiquity across this country, we needed to rethink how we construct,” said Jess George, head of government and community affairs for Google Fiber’s East region. “So essentially, we took a step away from active construction.”

Google now utilizes “shallow construction,” George says, to minimize issues. Extending Google’s fiber optic cables still involves plenty of digging, but Mayor Weaver believes it’s a worthy inconvenience for more high-speed internet.

p.s. — Apex resident Jeremy Davis shared this photo of Google Fiber recently being installed near his yard. “They mostly did a pretty good job preserving and replacing the turf to cover what they dug up,” he said. “I was pleasantly surprised by that.”

Apex resident Jeremy Davis shared this photo of Google Fiber being installed near his yard. “They mostly did a pretty good job preserving and replacing the turf to cover what they dug up,” he said.
Apex resident Jeremy Davis shared this photo of Google Fiber being installed near his yard. “They mostly did a pretty good job preserving and replacing the turf to cover what they dug up,” he said.

Short stuff: NC’s “new” richest man

  • In 2022, Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney unseated SAS Institute founder Jim Goodnight as the wealthiest North Carolina resident. This week, Goodnight took back the top spot on the annual Forbes list.

SAS CEO Jim Goodnight speaks to the media at a ceremony dedicating a new building on the SAS campus in Cary on Oct. 21, 2014.
SAS CEO Jim Goodnight speaks to the media at a ceremony dedicating a new building on the SAS campus in Cary on Oct. 21, 2014.

National Tech Happenings: AI edition

Deep fake images of Donald Trump’s arraignment are spreading around the internet. AI image generators like Midjourney have been tricking people with false images, including of the former president.

For example, this photo is not real:

This is fake.
This is fake.

Stanford University released its 2023 Artificial Intelligence Index Report which shows North Carolina is just outside the top 10 for AI job postings

Google will add AI chat to its search engine, Sundar Pichai told The Wall Street Journal.

Thanks for reading!

This story was produced with financial support from a coalition of partners led by Innovate Raleigh as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work.

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