AOL is finally shutting down its dial-up internet service
[August 12, 2025] By
WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS
NEW YORK (AP) — AOL's dial-up internet is finally taking its last bow.
Yes, while perhaps a dinosaur by today's digital standards, dial-up is
still around. But AOL says it's officially pulling the plug for its
service on Sept. 30.
"AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to
discontinue Dial-up Internet," AOL wrote in a brief update on its
support site — noting that dial-up and associated software “optimized
for older operating systems" will soon be unavailable on AOL plans.
AOL, formerly America Online, introduced many households to the world
wide web for the first time when its dial-up service launched decades
ago, rising to prominence particularly in the 90s and early 2000s.
The creaky door to the internet was characterized by a once-ubiquitous
series of beeps and buzzes heard over the phone used to connect your
computer online — along with frustrations of being kicked off the web if
anyone else at home needed the landline for another call, and an endless
bombardment of CDs mailed out by AOL to advertise free trials.
Eventually, broadband and wireless offerings emerged and rose to
dominance, doing away with dial-up's quirks for most people accessing
the internet today.
Still, a handful of consumers have continued to rely on internet
services connected over telephone lines. In the U.S., according to
Census Bureau data, an estimated 163,401 households were using dial-up
alone to get online in 2023, representing just over 0.13% of all homes
with internet subscriptions nationwide.
AOL was the largest dial-up internet provider for some time, but not the
only one to emerge over the years. Some smaller internet providers
continue to offer dial-up today. Regardless, the decline of dial-up has
been a long time coming. And AOL shutting down its service arrives as
other relics of the internet's earlier days continue to disappear.
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The AOL logo is shown on a wall of the company's New York office, on
Monday, May 12, 2008. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)
 Microsoft retired video calling
service Skype just earlier this year, for example — as well as
Internet Explorer back in 2022. And in 2017, AOL discontinued its
Instant Messenger — a chat platform that was once lauded as the
biggest trend in online communication since email when it was
founded in 1997, but later struggled to ward off rivals.
AOL itself is far from the dominant internet player
it was decades ago — when, beyond dial-up and IMs, the company also
became known for its “You’ve got mail” catchphrase that greeted
users who checked their inboxes, as famously displayed in the 1998
film starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan by the same name.
Before it was America Online, AOL was founded as Quantum Computer
Services in 1985. It soon rebranded and hit the public market in
1991. Near the height of the dot-com boom, AOL's market value
reached nearly $164 billion in 2000. But tumultuous years followed,
and that valuation plummeted as the once-tech pioneer bounced
between multiple owners. After a disastrous merger with Time Warner
Inc., Verizon acquired AOL — which later sold AOL, along with Yahoo,
to a private equity firm.
At the time Verzion announced that sale to in 2021, an anonymous
source familiar with the transaction told CNBC that the number of
AOL dial-up users was “in the low thousands," down from 2.1 million
when Verzion first moved to acquire AOL in 2015 — and far below peak
demand seen back in the 90s and early 2000s. But beyond dial-up, AOL
continues to offer its free email services, as well as subscriptions
that advertise identity protection and other tech support.
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