You've got... no more dial-up: AOL ends 34 years of dial-up internet
will discontinue its dial-up internet service at the end of September, closing the book on more than three decades of the landline-based connection that brought millions of Americans online for the first time.
The company posted a notice on its website stating: "AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet. This service will no longer be available in AOL plans." The shutdown on September 30 will also retire AOL's Dialer software and Shield browser.
At its peak in 2000, AOL boasted 25 million subscribers and handled half of all consumer internet traffic. The service became a cultural touchstone, flooding mailboxes with CD-ROM trial offers and making its "You've got mail" chime famous enough to inspire a Hollywood movie.
Despite broadband's dominance, about 160,000 Americans still rely on dial-up internet according to 2023 Census data. Many aren't nostalgic users but people in areas where high-speed internet remains unavailable or unaffordable.
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The dial-up experience required a patience that feels foreign today. Users freed up their phone lines, endured the distinctive modem handshake of beeps and static, then waited for pages to load at 56 kilobits per second, roughly 400 times slower than modern broadband.
AOL itself has shrunk considerably since its heyday. After a disastrous merger with Time Warner in 2000, the company passed through several owners before landing with private equity firm Apollo Global Management in 2021. The beloved AIM messaging service shut down in 2017.
The September closure ends a service that introduced millions to the internet, though for most Americans (fun fact: AOL is an acronym for
America Online
), that introduction happened decades ago when faster alternatives arrived.
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