When did dialup Internet access cease in the UK?

[G6Tanuki]

In a natter with friends on 80M recently, we wondered when dialup Internet access ceased being available, and who the last ISP to support it would have been.

I would guess that dialup stopped being available some time around 2006, and that the last significant provider would have been someone like AOL, whose users were always seen as the least technically savvy.

I switched to ADSL in around 2001, back then the prospect of 8Mbit/S download was just so necessary. But in those days broadband was an 'over the top' service you got from the ISP of your choice, you still needed to pay separately for a POTS landline.

[TonyDuell]

I was using dialup to Demon until 2014

[paulsherwin]

There's probably a rack of modems somewhere that you can dial up even today, but it will be very specialist and I'm not aware of any consumer facing ISPs offering it as a product.

[buggies]

There are still a quite few listed.

This one in Huddersfield
https://www.telnetbbsguide.com/bbs/big-time-bbs/
The modem answered but I was not prepared for it. Not sure how it would work with VOIP?

[Maarten]

VOIP will usually work up to 28k8 or 33k6 fixed baud rates. 56k0 will be out of the question

[Keith956]

I recall moving from dialup to ISDN (remember that?), must have been somewhere between 1998 and 2002. But that was short lived as NTL cabled the street around then, and by the time we moved in 2009 we were on 20Mb/s. Alas the small village we moved to only offered ADSL at around 6Mb/s, it took 15 years before we finally got FTTP!

[Richard_FM]

I remember my family had broadband fitted in 2005, not long after I bought a new computer which had a modem installed in it.

One of my cousins was late switching over to Broadband, but I can't remember the exact date he eventually got it.

[locknut]

Originally Posted by Keith956

Alas the small village we moved to only offered ADSL at around 6Mb/s, it took 15 years before we finally got FTTP!

We didn't get FTTC until 2018, before that we had poor ADSL - 1-2Mb most of the time, due to the very long (and at times very poor) exchange only line.

Come to think of it, I don't think we had ADSL until 2005, and then only at a fixed 512Kb.

[Graham G3ZVT]

I've just looked through my old work diaries, and in the back of the 2010 diary I have scribbled

freeukisp.co.uk
0844 711 0059
and the (common) credentials
user: freeisp@internet
password: internet

I found that invaluable on the occasions where I installed a system and needed to get our software registered, but the ADSL was not yet working.
At the time, most of our installations were equipped with a US Robotics modem, as well as ADSL. These were used for ordering stock by dialling in directly to wholesalers who had yet to embrace the 21st century

The danger of this is that you might leave site forgetting to disable the DUN and the customer runs up an enormous phone bill thinking they were using their broadband.
Please don't ask me how I know this

[Graham G3ZVT]

Originally Posted by buggies

There are still a quite few listed.

This one in Huddersfield
https://www.telnetbbsguide.com/bbs/big-time-bbs/
The modem answered but I was not prepared for it. Not sure how it would work with VOIP?

That looks like a primitive BBS.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system

[buggies]

Originally Posted by Graham G3ZVT

That looks like a primitive BBS.

]

Yes - you are right Graham. I had hoped that it provided at least a minimum internet gateway. Looks like nothing left in the UK although a number still working in the rurual areas of USA.