AOL is finally shutting down dial-up

AOL dial-up is ending connected September 30th according to a statement posted connected the company’s website. It marks the extremity of the work that was synonymous with the net for galore since its motorboat successful 1991. 

“AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet,” reads the connection by the Yahoo-owned company. “This work volition nary longer beryllium disposable successful AOL plans. As a result, connected September 30, 2025 this work and the associated software, the AOL Dialer bundle and AOL Shield browser, which are optimized for older operating systems and dial-up net connections, volition beryllium discontinued.”

You mightiness beryllium amazed that the work was inactive operating. I’m not. At past count, a 2019 US census estimated that 265,000 radical successful the United States were inactive utilizing dial-up internet, conscionable a fewer years after I wrote this:

As a septuagenarian, my father’s communicative was emblematic of long-time AOL dial-up subscribers. His subscription was a information blanket. He was definite helium didn’t request the dial-up component, but helium didn’t privation to hazard losing entree to his banal portfolio, capitalist forums, and email. His setup worked, and helium could spend to support paying the subscription helium had dutifully paid for implicit a decade.

With my help, we were capable to migrate everything helium utilized connected AOL to the ad-supported and unfastened net that was already being delivered into his location via the broadband constituent of his cablegram package. Even aft things were afloat mirrored, helium inactive felt trepidation erstwhile the clip came to prime up the telephone and terminate his dial-up relationship (despite AOL’s champion effort to obscure and complicate the procedure). Months aboriginal helium told maine helium felt silly for letting the ruse spell connected for truthful long.

Reading that present and I’m struck to deliberation that the extremity of AOL dial-up arrives astatine the aforesaid clip as Google Zero and the extremity of the ad-supported internet.