{"id":12638,"date":"2025-08-11T19:13:36","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T19:13:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/aol-is-finally-shutting-down-dial-up\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T19:13:36","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T19:13:36","slug":"aol-is-finally-shutting-down-dial-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/aol-is-finally-shutting-down-dial-up\/","title":{"rendered":"AOL is finally shutting down dial-up"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<p><img alt=\"Thomas Ricker\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"36\" height=\"36\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\"  src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/chorus\/author_profile_images\/196111\/IMG_5981_2.0.jpeg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&#038;w=96\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><span aria-expanded=\"false\" aria-haspopup=\"true\" role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\"><span id=\"follow-author-standard_article_details-dmcyOmF1dGhvclByb2ZpbGU6MTEy\"><span><span><svg width=\"9\" height=\"9\" viewBox=\"0 0 9 9\" fill=\"none\" aria-label=\"Follow\"><path d=\"M5 0H4V4H0V5H4V9H5V5H9V4H5V0Z\" \/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><span>Thomas Ricker<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>is a deputy editor and Verge co-founder with a passion for human-centric cities, e-bikes, and life as a digital nomad. He\u2019s been a tech journalist for 20 years.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"zephr-anchor\">\n<p>AOL dial-up is ending on September 30th according to a statement posted on the company\u2019s website. It marks the end of the service that was synonymous with the internet for many since its launch in 1991.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet,\u201d reads the statement by the Yahoo-owned company. \u201cThis service will no longer be available in AOL plans. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>You might be surprised that the service was still operating. I\u2019m not. At last count, a 2019 US census estimated that 265,000 people in the United States were still using dial-up internet, just a few years after I wrote this:<\/p>\n<div>\n<blockquote>\n<p>As a septuagenarian, my father\u2019s story was typical of long-time AOL dial-up subscribers. His subscription was a security blanket. He was sure he didn\u2019t need the dial-up component, but he didn\u2019t want to risk losing access to his stock portfolio, investor forums, and email. His setup worked, and he could afford to keep paying the subscription he had dutifully paid for over a decade.<\/p>\n<p>With my help, we were able to migrate everything he used on AOL to the ad-supported and open internet that was already being delivered into his house via the broadband component of his cable package. Even after things were fully mirrored, he still felt trepidation when the time came to pick up the phone and terminate his dial-up account (despite AOL\u2019s best attempt to obscure and complicate the procedure). Months later he told me he felt silly for letting the ruse go on for so long.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<p>Reading that now and I\u2019m struck to think that the end of AOL dial-up arrives at the same time as Google Zero and the end of the ad-supported internet.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><span><strong>Follow topics and authors<\/strong> from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li id=\"follow-author-article_footer-dmcyOmF1dGhvclByb2ZpbGU6MTEy\"><span aria-expanded=\"false\" aria-haspopup=\"true\" role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\"><span><span><svg width=\"9\" height=\"9\" viewBox=\"0 0 9 9\" fill=\"none\" aria-label=\"Follow\"><path d=\"M5 0H4V4H0V5H4V9H5V5H9V4H5V0Z\" \/><\/svg><\/span><span>Thomas Ricker<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><\/li>\n<li><\/li>\n<li><\/li>\n<li><\/li>\n<li><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thomas Ricker is a deputy editor and Verge co-founder with a passion for human-centric cities, e-bikes, and life as a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7282,"featured_media":12639,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1166],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-website"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7282"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}