After more than 30 years, AOL will shut down its dial-up internet service.
According to the ISP, dial-up will be discontinued on September 30 along with its recognizable, high-pitched connecting noise, You’ve Got Mail greeting, and related software.
Dial-up Internet will no longer be offered, according to a statement from AOL, which regularly reviews its offerings. AOL plans will no longer offer this feature. Therefore, this service and its related software, the AOL Shield browser and AOL Dialer software, which are designed for older operating systems and dial-up internet connections, will be discontinued on September 30, 2025.
There won’t be any impact on free AOL email accounts or other services.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2023, the most recent year for which data is available, dial-up was available in around 163,000 households, or around 0.1 percent of all household internet subscriptions in the country. In 1995, there were 10 million users; now, that number is lower.
High-speed broadband has mostly supplanted dial-up, which uses landline phone service to access the internet.
The early 1990s internet pioneer America Online rebranded itself as AOL in 2006. In 2017, it shut down the well-known instant messaging program AIM.
In 2009, AOL was sold off as part of a high-profile transaction with Time Warner.
In 2015, Verizon acquired the business. In 2021, the telecom corporation sold the Yahoo and AOL companies to Apollo Global Management, a private equity group.
