Nearly 40 years after it began, AOL has announced it will be discontinuing its dial-up internet service to customers at the end of September.
In a brief statement, the once dominant internet service provider (now owned by a private equity firm) announced that after a “routine” evaluation of its products and services, the company has “decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet. The service will no longer be available in AOL plans.”
The final plug will be pulled on September 30, 2025.
Who still uses dial-up internet? According to howtogeek.com, about 41% of Americans were using dial-up internet in 2001. By 2015, the number was less than 1%. That tiny number still represented thousands of people, which has been gradually winding down to zero in the decade since. According to CNBC, 1.5 million people still subscribed to AOL as of 4 years ago, though dial-up customers represented only a portion “the low thousands” of those. (The man who voiced AOL’s nostalgic “You’ve Got Mail” prompt almost outlived the service before he passed away last November.)
AOL, formerly America Online, traces its history back to an online service called Control Video Corporation that offered an online service for the Atari 2600 gaming console. In 1985, the company was superseded by Quantum Computer Services, offering subscribers with Commodore 64 and Commodore 128 computers the opportunity to game on software licensed by early online gaming pioneer PlayNet. By 1989, the company had renamed itself America Online and began an ambitious plan to fill every mailbox in the world with a floppy disk or CD-ROM offering “free” AOL software. After orchestrating the largest merger in history with media conglomerate Time Warner, the company spun out, was gobbled up by Verizon and later sold to private equity group Apollo Global Management.
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