AOL is finally shutting down dial-up

AOL dial-up is ending on September 30th according to a statement posted on the company’s website. It marks the end of the service that was synonymous with the internet for many since its launch in 1991. 

“AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet,” reads the statement by the Yahoo-owned company. “This service will no longer be available in AOL plans. As a result, on September 30, 2025 this service and the associated software, the AOL Dialer software and AOL Shield browser, which are optimized for older operating systems and dial-up internet connections, will be discontinued.”

You might be surprised that the service was still operating. I’m not. At last count, a 2019 US census estimated that 265,000 people in the United States were still using dial-up internet, just a few years after I wrote this:

As a septuagenarian, my father’s story was typical of long-time AOL dial-up subscribers. His subscription was a security blanket. He was sure he didn’t need the dial-up component, but he didn’t want to risk losing access to his stock portfolio, investor forums, and email. His setup worked, and he could afford to keep paying the subscription he had dutifully paid for over a decade.

With my help, we were able to migrate everything he used on AOL to the ad-supported and open internet that was already being delivered into his house via the broadband component of his cable package. Even after things were fully mirrored, he still felt trepidation when the time came to pick up the phone and terminate his dial-up account (despite AOL’s best attempt to obscure and complicate the procedure). Months later he told me he felt silly for letting the ruse go on for so long.

Reading that now and I’m struck to think that the end of AOL dial-up arrives at the same time as Google Zero and the end of the ad-supported internet.