This is a great suggestion. Most people forget or don't know that the service they're paying an ISP for usually includes dial-up access. Hooray for legacy.Just to be totally clear, what kutibah is suggesting is that if you pay for any kind of Internet access you probably have access to a dial-up account. You are not going to be getting the same speeds as you see when using a DSL or cable modem to access your Internet Service Provider's service, but you can access your dial-up account from a lot of places -- for instance, places other than the geographic location of your Digital Subscriber Line or the cable after which your cable service is named.

Using a dial-up account can be a great, if slow, solution if you find yourself in a location with a phone line and no other Internet access. Most laptops include an analog modem that you can use in such a situation.

kutibah's suggestion includes the obsevation that most "smartphone" type devices can act as analog modems. Cellphone carriers usually refer to this by the correct, if pedantic, name "circuit-switched data." The carrier's don't really want you to use their CSD sevice (they'd rather that you pay a monthly fee for some flavor of high speed service), but they all offer a CSDoption in one form or another.