The electric chatter of a dial-up modem: the thoughtful buzzing, the ritual beeping — it meant your computer was magically communing with the Internet. In the 1990s, the dial-up modem was the gatekeeper to the World Wide Web, and its cacophonous tattoo was this new world’s anthem. But as high-speed Internet has grown in popularity, many users no longer recognize its siren song.

That is, unless you’re in one of the 5.6 million households that still use dial-up Internet in America.

Yes, dial-up is alive although hardly flourishing, according to a February 2010 report published by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), a federal agency that advises the president on telecommunications policies. About 4.7 percent of, or 5.6 million, American households still use dial-up in the home, the report found. That’s a huge drop from the 38.6 million households that used it in October 2003.

“In my forecasts, the number of dial-up users keeps shrinking and shrinking,” said Amanda Sabia, principal analyst at Gartner Inc., an information technology advisory company. She admits that there will always be small groups that believe dial-up is “good enough” or that high-speed is too expensive, but she says it’s a dying trend.

Indeed, the two most common reasons cited in the report for not switching to high-speed were that it was unnecessary (38 percent of respondents) or too expensive (26 percent).

In a similar study conducted in June 2009 by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a nonprofit research organization, 32 percent of respondents who used dial-up said they needed the price to drop before switching to high-speed Internet. In contrast, 20 percent of dial-up users polled said that nothing would get them to change.

Indeed, there are plenty of reasons people cling to dial-up, as one can discover when asking those who still use it whether high-speed Internet is available near them.

“You realize you called South Dakota, right?” said Tina Sanderson, once she stopped laughing at the question. She lives in the city of Conde, population 187, according to the latest U.S. census data, in sparsely inhabited northern South Dakota.

“Satellite sucks,” Sanderson observed about a pricier alternative. “If the weather is bad, you won’t have signal.” For many residents in rural areas, where high-speed infrastructure is costly for companies to install, the choice is dial-up service or Internet packages priced beyond most consumers’ means.

Gordon Landefeld, a marketing analyst for Skycasters satellites services, based in Akron, Ohio, said its Internet service is geared toward businesses and wealthy consumers in remote areas who can afford to pay at least $900 for the satellite, $400 for installation and at least $149 a month for a subscription. While the company is working on a more affordable consumer package, Landefeld said it won’t be widely available before next year.

According to the NTIA report, 19.3 percent of rural households still rely on dial-up service, and 11.1% of those cited lack of access for not switching. (In urban areas, only 8.5% use dial-up.) The South leads the nation in dial-up usage, with 2 million households still using it, according to a December 2009 report from the NTIA, while the Midwest closely follows with about 1.4 million.

There’s also habit. Several years ago Charlie Biggar, a resident of Washington, D.C., bought his octogenarian father MSN TV, a streamlined personal computer that hooks up directly to a television. With a remote control in lieu of a mouse, the device resembles a video game system more than a computer. Biggar said his father uses it only 15 minutes a day, for e-mail. “We’ve talked about hooking it up to broadband … but he uses it so little that it’s not economically practical.”

Neither cost nor availability was an issue for Patricia Mokhtarian of Davis, Calif., a college professor who used dial-up up until last year. She stayed with dial-up out of inertia, she said, not wanting to go through the hassle of switching providers. There was, however, one other practical reason — slower Internet meant fewer files from work being “thrust upon” her over the weekends, she said in an e-mail. Since switching to broadband, she can’t even remember the sound of her dial-up modem’s jingle. “Must not have been memorable,” she said.

In Tucson, Ariz., Esther Clayton, a 71-year-old grandmother and real estate agent has hung on to her dial-up connection — until now. A user of AOL’s dial-up service for the past four years, she said she is canceling it by the end of February. She’s not a computer person by nature, she said. “I’ve taken some computer classes, but I’m not crazy about it,” she said during a phone call. “I’d rather talk on the phone.” But when she recently remarried, she found herself sending wedding invitations by e-mail. “I’ve been updating everything in my life,” she said.

A computer on a dial-up connection running 30 Web-site tabs simultaneously. (Screen capture from Kiva Foster)

Yet others still defend the virtues of dial-up over high-speed access. Kiva Foster, a 47-year-old research librarian, has found a way to get the best of both worlds – speed and thrift. Although high-speed Internet is readily available to her Washington, D.C., apartment, she can work just as fast with a dial-up connection. “Right now I have 17 tabs open in my browser, two more windows on my task bar. I’m playing Sade’s new album, and I have a YouTube video open,” she said. She doesn’t know quite why it works, she admits, with her “regular old computer,” but dial-up is better than it was a decade ago. “It’s much faster now. All the dial-up services have been accelerated. I don’t think anyone uses ‘regular’ dial-up anymore.”

Because her service provides a phone line splitter, she never has to miss a call when she’s online and can stay logged on practically all the time. But unfortunately, without the need to sign back in, it’s been a long time since Foster has heard the infamous dial-up jingle. “It’s a part of Americana, I know, but I haven’t heard it in years.”