After Over 40 Years, AOL Will Discontinue Its Iconic Dial-Up Internet Service

After Over 40 Years, AOL Will Discontinue Its Iconic Dial-Up Internet Service

An Era of Online Connectivity Comes to an End

After over 40 years, AOL will discontinue its iconic dial-up internet service. The technology that characterized an era of online connectivity will come to an end on September 30 when AOL announces the closure of its dial-up internet service, which was once a defining feature of early internet access. The decision was made following a regular review of AOL’s offerings, according to a notice on the company’s website titled “Dial-up Internet to be discontinued.” The AOL Shield browser and AOL Dialer software will also be discontinued, in addition to the dial-up service.

The Sound of a Generation’s First Internet Connection

Many people believed that the World Wide Web could be accessed through the hums, clicks, and high-pitched tones of a dial-up modem. This type of internet access gained popularity in the 1990s thanks to AOL, which at its height offered speeds of up to 56 kilobits per second. In contrast, gigabits per second are the speed at which today’s broadband services operate.

The Rise of AOL’s Dial-Up Era

As part of its strategy at the time, AOL distributed its well-known free trial CDs virtually everywhere, resulting in what tech site Apple Insider called a “walled garden” internet experience. AOL had accumulated 10 million subscribers by 1995.

The Time Warner Merger and AOL’s Decline

The company’s 2000 merger with Time Warner, which subsequently turned out to be one of the most notorious business failures in history, marked the pinnacle of its corporate success. In 2009, Time Warner separated from AOL.

Verizon Acquisition and the Final Years

When AOL still had 2.1 million dial-up customers, Verizon paid $4.4 billion to acquire the service in 2015. As faster, more sophisticated technologies made dial-up obsolete, that number fell to the “low thousands” by 2021, according to CNBC. AOL joined Yahoo’s portfolio when Apollo Global Management acquired Verizon’s media assets, including Yahoo and AOL, in 2021.

The End of an Internet Icon

For people who first went online with AOL’s “You’ve got mail” greeting and slow internet speeds, dial-up is now merely a fond recollection. AOL’s shutdown on September 30 marks the end of a service that once linked millions of people to the internet and influenced how the world went online.