You’ve Got Mail no more – AOL is bidding farewell to dial-up internet

AOL’s dial-up internet is finally taking its last bow. Yes, while perhaps a dinosaur by today’s digital standards, dial-up is still around. But AOL says it’s officially pulling the plug for its service on September 30.

“AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue dial-up internet,” AOL wrote in a brief update on its support site – noting that dial-up and associated software “optimised for older operating systems” will soon be unavailable on AOL plans.

The creaky door to the internet was characterised by a once-ubiquitous series of beeps and buzzes heard over the phone used to connect your computer online – along with frustrations of being kicked off the web if anyone else at home needed the landline for another call, and an endless bombardment of CDs mailed out by AOL to advertise free trials.

Eventually, broadband and wireless offerings emerged and rose to dominance, doing away with dial-up’s quirks for most people accessing the internet today.

Still, a handful of consumers have continued to rely on internet services connected over telephone lines. In the United States, according to Census Bureau data, an estimated 163,401 households were using dial-up alone to get online in 2023, representing just over 0.13 per cent of all homes with internet subscriptions nationwide.

AOL was the largest dial-up internet provider for some time, but not the only one to emerge over the years. Some smaller internet providers continue to offer dial-up today. Regardless, the decline of dial-up has been a long time coming. And AOL shutting down its service arrives as other relics of the internet’s earlier days continue to disappear.