Aol Is Finally Shutting Down Dial-up

AOL dial-up is ending connected September 30th according to a statement posted connected nan company’s website. It marks nan extremity of nan work that was synonymous pinch nan net for galore since its motorboat immoderate 34 years ago. 

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

You mightiness beryllium amazed that nan work was still operating. I’m not. At past count, a 2019 US census estimated that 265,000 group successful nan United States were still 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 judge he didn’t request nan dial-up component, but he didn’t want to consequence losing entree to his banal portfolio, investor forums, and email. His setup worked, and he could spend to support paying nan subscription he had dutifully paid for complete a decade.

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

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