Replacement by broadband

Broadband Internet access (cable, DSL, and FTTx) has been replacing dial-up access in many parts of the world. Broadband connections typically offer speeds of 700 kbit/s or higher for two-thirds more than the price of dial-up on average.^[2] In addition broadband connections are "always on", thus avoiding the need to connect and disconnect at the start and end of each session. Finally, unlike dial-up, broadband does not require exclusive use of a phone line and so one can access the Internet and at the same time make and receive voice phone calls without having a second phone line.
However, many areas still remain without high speed Internet despite the eagerness of potential customers. This can be attributed to population, location, or sometimes ISPs' lack of interest due to little chance of profitability and high costs to build the required infrastructure. Some dial-up ISPs have responded to the increased competition by lowering their rates and making dial-up an attractive option for those who merely want email access or basic web browsing.^[4][5]

Performance

An example handshake of a dial-up modem

	"Dial up modem noises" Menu 0:00 Typical noises of dial-up modem while a modem is establishing connection with a local ISP-server in order to get access to the public Internet.
Problems playing this file? See media help.

Modern dial-up modems typically have a maximum theoretical transfer speed of 56 kbit/s (using the V.90 or V.92 protocol), although in most cases 40–50 kbit/s is the norm. Factors such as phone line noise as well as the quality of the modem itself play a large part in determining connection speeds.
Some connections may be as low as 20 kbit/s in extremely "noisy" environments, such as in a hotel room where the phone line is shared with many extensions, or in a rural area, many miles from the phone exchange. Other things such as long loops, loading coils, pair gain, electric fences (usually in rural locations), and digital loop carriers can also cripple connections to 20 kbit/s or lower.
Analog telephone lines are digitally switched and transported inside a Digital Signal 0 once reaching the telephone company's equipment. Digital Signal 0 is 64 kbit/s; therefore a 56 kbit/s connection is the highest that will ever be possible with analog phone lines.
Dial-up connections usually have latency as high as 300 ms or even more; this is longer than for many forms of broadband, such as cable or DSL, but typically less than satellite connections. Longer latency can make video conferencing and online gaming difficult, if not impossible. An increasing amount of Internet content such as streaming media will not work at dial-up speeds.
Older games released in the late 1990s and up to the early 2000s such as Everquest, Red Faction, Warcraft 3, Final Fantasy XI, Phantasy Star Online, Guild Wars, Unreal Tournament, Halo: Combat Evolved, Audition, Quake 3: Arena, and Ragnarok Online, are capable of running on 56k dial-up. The first consoles to provide Internet connectivity, the Sega Dreamcast and the PlayStation 2 supported dial-up as well as broadband, the GameCube had an ability to use dial-up and broadband connections, but this was used in very few games and required a separate adapter. The original Xbox exclusively required a broadband connection. Many computer and video games released since the mid-2000s do not even include the option to use dial-up. However, there are exceptions to this, such as Vendetta Online, which can still run on a dial-up modem.

Using compression to exceed 56k

The V.42, V.42bis and V.44 standards allow modems to accept uncompressed data at a rate faster than the line rate. These algorithms use data compression to achieve higher throughput.
For instance, a 53.3 kbit/s connection with V.44 can transmit up to 53.3 × 6 = 320 kbit/s if the offered data stream can be compressed that much. However, the compressibility of data tends to vary continuously, for example, due to the transfer of already-compressed files (ZIP files, JPEG images, MP3 audio, MPEG video).^[6] A modem might be sending compressed files at approximately 50 kbit/s, uncompressed files at 160 kbit/s, and pure text at 320 kbit/s, or any rate in this range.[