Dial-up forum: Problems with AOL

AOL has been given the nickname AOHell because of its invasiveness and the extreme lengths you must go to to completely remove it from your computer. They have also faced several lawsuits concerning them not letting customers go, billing them after they terminate their service, etc. In short, the former internet giant has fallen and is turning to advertising-based free software/subscriptions to stay afloat.

In regards to finding another ISP, that really depends on where they live...even providers such as Netzero/Juno (which I would not recommend) don't have phone numbers available in all regions. I've found that local providers out of regional major cities are usually the best, primarily because their userbase is smaller. Your best option may just to thumb through your local phone book.

When it comes to increasing their internet speed, there is nothing they can do. The fastest you can go with dial-up is 56K and current government regulations limit that to 53K. After that you have to take into consideration the age of the phone lines, quality of the connection, distance to the server, number of people online, etc. With that you're lucky to get to the low- to mid-40s.

My suggestion would be to contact their phone company and see if DSL is available in their area. If so they can pay around the same per month but have a connection at least four times faster than dial-up. It may not be available in the remote area but it's worth a look.

John

Every local phone company offers dial-up service. Go with who provides dial tone. Since ALL ISP providers use the local phone company for access facilities, use the local phone company. One call in case of problems. ALL ISPs lease the facilities from the local phone company. Why give money to someone else?

I too live in the rural part of my state and do not have access to DSL. I have Netzero 3G which is fine for now. You can search Google or Yahoo for dial-up ISP service. There are links you can find that when you put in your phone number it will tell you what ISP services are available in your area.
Hope this helps!

techreader

I used to have AOL but found it too expensive. I switched to Netscape (which AOL owns) and found it reliable, always get on around 52 kbps, and is cheap. I never get a busy signal also.

I posted a querie earlier and cannot find it lol but it pertained to suddenly being kicked off line and getting the error message that it was due to inactivity. This had been going on for about a week[which corelates to the time I switched from $17.95 to 9.95 unlimited AOL]. I contacted AOL tech support and was told that it is to better serve their community. If the line becomes busy, it will boot you off - the suggestion was to use a different number to access and I did and so far, I have not been booted. Oddly I noticed that now there are only 4 local phone numbers for me to access, compared to 7 or 8in the past. How long til other people also discover this? I opted for the last number on the list. I live in a rural area where dial up is my only option.