Damn, the 1990's are Really Over .., AOL to End Dial-Up Internet Access

The pioneering service has dwindled to a Yahoo sub-brand, but some people still rely on it for their online connection. Come Sept. 30, they'll need a new ISP.

Sometime in the dying moments of September, what was once a daily habit for much of the online world will happen for the last time: a dial-up modem will screech its way to connecting to AOL.

The Yahoo subsidiary broke the news in an undated tech-support note titled "Dial-up Internet to be discontinued."

“AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet,” the note says. “As a result, on September 30, 2025, this service and the associated software, the AOL Dialer software and AOL Shield browser, which are optimized for older operating systems and dial-up internet connections, will be discontinued.”

The demise of AOL’s dial-up service does not mean the extinction of the oldest form of consumer online access. Estimates from the Census Bureau’s 2023 American Community Survey show 163,401 Americans connected to the internet via dial-up that year.

That was by far the smallest segment of the internet-using population, dwarfed by 100,166,949 subscribing to such forms of broadband as “cable, fiber optic, or DSL”; 8,628,648 using satellite; 3,318,901 using “Internet access without a subscription” (which suggests Wi-Fi from coffee shops or public libraries); and 1,445,135 via “other service.”

The remaining AOL dial-up subscribers will need to find some sort of replacement, which in rural areas may be limited to fixed wireless or SpaceX’s considerably more expensive Starlink. Or they may wind up joining the ranks of Americans with no internet access: 6,866,059,

https://www.pcmag.com/news/end-of-an-e-era-aol-to-end-dial-up-internet-access

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