AOL will permanently discontinue its dial-up internet service on September 30. For decades, this technology symbolized the early days of the internet. This marks the end of a service that began in 1991, 34 years ago. At the time, home computers were rapidly gaining popularity.
AOL announced this on its website. In the 1990s, America Online, as the company was then called, was known worldwide for its free installation CDs (photo) that were everywhere. They brought millions of users online for the first time. The distinctive beeping and crackling sounds of the modem, often followed by the familiar message “You’ve got mail!”, were for many their first introduction to the worldwide web. The company officially changed its name to AOL in 2006.
AOL states that it regularly reviews its products and services. Based on this review, the company will discontinue its dial-up internet service at the end of next month. The use of a regular telephone line for internet access has now been completely replaced by modern, wireless, and high-speed connections.
AOL does not say how many people still use the service. Figures from the US census show that in 2019, approximately 265,000 Americans were still connected exclusively via dial-up. That amounted to about two percent of households with an internet subscription. In 1995, the company still had ten million customers; in 2015, when Verizon acquired AOL for $4.4 billion, that number had fallen to 2.1 million.
Multiple acquisitions
After the failed merger with Time Warner in 2000 and the subsequent split in 2009, AOL came under the Verizon umbrella in 2015. In 2021, Verizon sold AOL together with Yahoo to investment company Apollo Global Management for $5 billion. Since then, AOL has been part of Yahoo, which is now writing the final chapter in the history of dial-up.
With its closure, one of the most recognizable relics of the internet from the 1990s and early 2000s will disappear.
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