Hanging up: AOL to pull the plug on its dial-up service after 36 years
- Reference: 1754921340
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/08/11/aol_to_pull_the_plug/
- Source link:
While there are very few users in the US who still connect to the Internet via modem and public telephone network, this termination – [1]scheduled for September 30 – feels very much like the end of an era.
Dial-up was, for many, the only way to connect to the Internet before broadband became as ubiquitous as it is today. A user would use a modem, which could encode and decode audio signals, to connect to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) via a conventional telephone line. It wasn't quick, and connections could be affected by noise on the line or someone picking up an extension somewhere else in the house, but it was often all there was.
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The advent of broadband signaled the rapid demise of dial-up. Always on and considerably faster, the technology was able to reach many homes, although users in remote areas struggled to make the move. However, the ever-increasing amount of data on the Internet meant that dial-up, which arguably reached its peak with speeds of around 56 kbit/s thanks to some nifty compression techniques, could not compete with the bandwidth on offer from even the slowest plans.
[3]
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That's not to say dial-up as a concept is going away. There are plenty of commercial applications where a reliable, low-bandwidth connection is more than adequate. Some users in remote, rural areas might have few other options. However, the end of AOL dial-up is significant.
[5]Only ISPs get to determine what constitutes 'affordable' broadband, says team Trump
[6]Biden broadband benchmarks are BS, says Trump FCC
[7]Mobile industry charts course to smartphone satellite broadband
[8]Exchange Online blocked from sending email to AOL and Yahoo
The AOL brand dates back to 1989 and is now to be found under the Yahoo! umbrella. A spokesperson for Yahoo! told The Register : "We are discontinuing the dial-up internet service component included in certain legacy AOL Advantage, CompuServe, and Netscape Connect Plans as we innovate to meet the needs of today's digital landscape.
"This change does not impact the numerous other valued products and services that these subscribers are able to access and enjoy as part of their plans. There is also no impact to our users' free AOL email accounts."
Except, obviously, how affected users will get to them.
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The number of users of AOL's dial-up service is reportedly in the low thousands. The Yahoo! spokesperson didn't confirm an exact number but said a "few" customers will be affected.
Americans who still need dial-up have other options. For example, NetZero offers what it calls [10]"HiSpeed Accelerated Dial-Up" for $29.95 a month.
Other suppliers have long since deactivated dial-up – British Telecom [11]pulled the plug in 2013 – but the September 30 termination for AOL's dial-up service will have triggered a wave of nostalgia for the days when the Compulink Information Exchange (CIX) reigned supreme (for UK nerds at least) and computers made a most alarming noise when connected to the Internet. ®
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[1] https://help.aol.com/articles/dial-up-internet-to-be-discontinued
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aJoTltJAbqbT_UXxyh4rtAAAAJc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aJoTltJAbqbT_UXxyh4rtAAAAJc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aJoTltJAbqbT_UXxyh4rtAAAAJc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/06/us_states_affordable_broadband/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/22/biden_broadband_benchmarks_are_bs/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/06/mobile_satellite_broadband_roadmap/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/14/exchange_online_blocked_from_sending/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aJoTltJAbqbT_UXxyh4rtAAAAJc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] http://store.netzero.net/account/showService.do?serviceId=nz-dialup
[11] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23877364
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Not in the UK.
I remember standing in a queue in an electrical retailer (Curry's, I think) about 25 years ago, and spotting a CD on a stand near the counter, that promised free dial-up internet for the one-off fee of purchasing the CD (which I think was around £20?). It seemed worth a punt.
The ISP in question was "LibertySurf", and the catch was that whilst the dial-up telephone number was a 0800 (free) number, you had to use their provided dialler, which would display an advertisement bar across the top of your browser.
However the program was easily removed, meaning no adverts, and free internet access really did mean free.
On 30th September there will be one final outpouring of Squeeeee woo wee wooowip wip wip squeeewooeeee
MOM GET OUT OF THE PHONE, I'm on the Internet... too late! :-(
The post is required, and must contain letters.
Compuserve Information Exchange?
Maybe, but for me and an awful lot of others it was always BIX - Byte Information Exchange. Home of so much stuff that's stayed with me across the decades, not least of which was the incredible Joanne Dow and her "Bixies" - emojis before there was such a thing. Happier days!
"few customers will be affected"
Yeah, because you only have few customers.
Dinosaurs go extinct. That's how it is.
CD mountain.
Allegedly, at one point, AOL CDs accounted for 50% of the CDs in the world.
I don't remember a month around the turn of the millennium when another AOL disc wouldn't plop through the letterbox.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL
Re: CD mountain.
And every film that was advertised would have "AOL Keyword: film" on it too.
Re: CD mountain.
The CD is when AOL became worthless to me.
The free floppies were actually useful.
Re: CD mountain.
Coasters, wind chimes, frisbees, toy vehicle wheels - a few of them they did have some worth...
The rest of the pile, not so much.
What is it with articles and comments that make me feel so damn old these days?
Now get off my lawn!
Re: Coasters, wind chimes, frisbees, toy vehicle wheels.
You never played "10 seconds in the microwave"? :-)
Ahh, now I feel old
I was a GuideUK for a few years, they paid for all our calls so I had to have an itemised bill. Anyway, I tied up the phone line one weekend solid downloading a full ISO. Imagine, 650Mb odd via 56k modem. No doubt I was using resuming ftp software.
Whilst AOL had it's issues, the chat rooms were often great to be in and the meet ups, which, to be fair, was a glorified sh*gfest. Hell, I used to chat regularly to Miss Whiplash both on AOL and on the phone (actual nice chats, not sex related stuff. She used to talk about her husband a lot as I think he was ill at the time)
I was also on Compuserve before that, but on a 28.8 modem.
Funny the stuff that The Register makes you recall
Re: Ahh, now I feel old
The "netslaves" book has some thinly veiled references about how was the life of the moderators/admins of such groups back in the day...
Worth a re-read
AOL
Never used AOL (had dial-up through university at glorious 9600 baud) but I remember the traffic spike from it when it took off. Lots of admins blocked the domain for various reasons from bandwidth to snobbery about an influx of Net Newbies. It was interesting times and things really did change quickly.
Dial-up is one of the things I will never miss. The Internet back then? Yes. Dial-up was crap in a crapbasket and was super expensive,