Amid the broadband market's growth and the battle between cablecos and telcos for customers, dial-up Internet accesss is apparently still alive and well. According to a story in itbusiness.ca, about one-third of the Canadians with Internet access are using a dial-up connection. This compares with 50% in 2001 but it's still a large group providing enough high-margin business to keep ISPs such as AOL Canada engaged. Dial-up is particularly prevalent in smaller communities where broadband service is not available and/or expensive. This is perhaps the Achilles’ heel of Canada's successful broadband penetration story: while consumers in large urban centres have several high-speed choices, rural Canadians are still waiting for the "big pipe" to arrive. Of course, the federal government continues to talk about expanding broadband into smaller communities but it sits on the sidelines while provinces such as Alberta (SuperNet) and B.C. (Network BC) actually make the necessarily investments to make it happen. In the meantime, dial-up customers have to either be patient or rely on companies such as Waterloo, Ont.-based Slipstream Technologies Inc., which has more than 2,000 ISPs around the world using its e-mail acceleration, compression and network optimization technology. In a recent column, Michael Geist argues that universal broadband access shouuld be a key priority as a three-person federal government panel reviews Canada's telecommunications policies. Perhaps satellite technology or Wi-Max is the way to offer reasonably priced high-speed service to smaller communities. Or maybe there is simply an enthusiastic constituency of dial-up users content to spend $10 or so a month to get their e-mail and look at a few Web pages. For whatever reason, dial-up access is a beast that refuses to die.