Dial-up is really on it's last legs now with an estimated 1.4 million UK homes dumping broadband slow cousin in the last six months.

According to Topic Point this leaves only 2.2 million narrowband users and it claims that in 2008 this number will dwindle to 700,000 and by 2010 dial-up will have all but disappeared.

Point Topic estimates that Orange has about 580,000 dial-up homes, which is as a result of customers flocking to Freeserve at the end of the millennium, but BT, Carphone Warehouse (with it's ex-AOL users), Virgin Media and Tiscali all retain substantial numbers.

Will dial-up every die? We suspect not totally as where there is no Wi-Fi access then users on the move have limited options available to connect to the internet, but for residential dial-up users it seems that they will soon be a thing of the past.