The Death of Dial Up - join us on a technology trip down memory lane

Remember this? Click here for a sound journey back to 1989!

Whether those dial up sounds fill you with a sense of fondness or frustration, it’s the beginning of the end for dial up, with one of New Zealand’s prominent wholesale dial up providers choosing to close down its service.

We owe a lot to dial up, having first got us online in 1989. In fact, in the same year, Actrix (which Voyager merged with in 2016) was the very first commercial internet provider in New Zealand. We recently migrated the last 90 Actrix dial up customers onto faster connections (including a 90 year old lady!) We thought it only fitting to pay homage to dial up, and some of its brothers in arms as we take a trip down technology memory lane…

Still kept on a pedestal by many a gamer, the Commodore Amiga is fondly remembered as the first serious multimedia machine, giving birth to the gaming industry back in 1985. Responsible for ruining our suntans and social lives, the Amiga brought us gaming gems such as Worms and Alien Breed. Our millennials at Voyager can’t quite believe the highs of the Amiga’s 1200bps baud speed rate, as opposed to the 900Mbps they experience now!

Betamax and chill doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, but before Netflix and other movie streaming, Betamax was where it was at, before even the VHS! Surprisingly Sony only just stopped making Betamax tapes in 2016, 40 years after its production. Hats off to the loyal Betamix brigade still defiant in their war against VHS! Speaking of VHS, who exactly, we’d like to know, were the culprits who didn’t rewind the tapes from the video store?

Apparently they make for great retro coasters nowadays but Floppy discs had a place in technology history for over 20 years, as the primary means of saving data since their invention by IBM in 1967. Floppy discs had a typical storage capacity of 1.44 megabytes as opposed to today’s standard 64GB flash drive.

New Zealand is considered one of the most technically advanced in the world for fixed broadband (especially compared to our ‘technological third world’ Aussie neighbours!), and Voyager is helping lead the way by delivering broadband at supersonic speeds to Kiwi homes across the country. We’re currently offering free upgrades for ADSL, VDSL or Fibre connections.

If you’re currently on dial up, or if you have any questions about your internet connection, feel free to contact our friendly New Zealand based helpdesk team on 0800 477 333 or email us on [email protected]