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AOL to discontinue dial-up internet

nytimes.com

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Re: AOL to discontinue dial-up internet

#21

Post by londons_explore »

clint wrote: post #15
robertoandred wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starlink is so much more expensive though, more than a lot of people in rural areas can afford.

You would be surprised how much people in extremely rural areas are being gouged for really crappy internet. I have a place less than an hour from Denver and without Starlink there are many, many people on extremely bad, oversubscribed 1Mbit DSL at the end of some gnarly POPs. There are sometimes local ISPs that provide p2p wifi in extremely limited areas (see: rich neighborhoods) and its fine but for 20/10 you're pa…

But 56k dialup (actual speed more like 25k) is too slow to load an https certificate before most sites time out. You aren't going to be able to load google.com

Re: AOL to discontinue dial-up internet

#22

Post by torgoguys »

hopelite wrote: post #2

I’ve always wondered about the remaining users of the dial-up service. Who are they and what is the use case for using dial-up? Does anyone know?

I had an elderly friend that still subscribed to AOL dialup until he died a couple of years ago. He had built his small business, which was very dependent on email, using an old AOL email address. The type of business he was in could involve old contacts suddenly appearing out of the blue again (via an email message) and so he wanted to maintain the AOL address to not lose that business.

Long ago, when AOL stopped requiring an AOL subscription to maintain an AOL email address, I advised him to cancel the AOL subscription. After explaining to me how important that exact address was to him he declined, stating that by paying the monthly fee he felt very assured the email address wouldn't go away and without paying for he felt like that assurance just wasn't there. So for years he knowingly paid for dialup he no longer actually used.

Re: AOL to discontinue dial-up internet

#23

Post by nemomarx »

morkalork wrote: post #11
robertoandred wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starlink is so much more expensive though, more than a lot of people in rural areas can afford.

Cellular internet. Edit: I'm not saying it's a good replacement for dialup, just that I have observed that many cell phone carriers are advertising plans for it now.

Rural mountainous areas have very bad cell coverage. When I grew up the local Verizon store didn't actually get signal and you had to drive up the road from there to take calls.

Those are the kinda places I imagine are expensive to run new installs to, so it's really phone lines or satellite

Re: AOL to discontinue dial-up internet

#25

Post by criddell »

InitialLastName wrote: post #18
londons_explore wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably people who have had a recurring payment set up since 1995 and never questioned what they're paying $23.99 per month for the last 30 years for.

I know at least two people who are still paying for an AOL dial-up subscription despite not using because they use an @aol email address and think it will be discontinued if they don't continue to pay for it.

Are they wrong?

Re: AOL to discontinue dial-up internet

#26

Post by stetrain »

hopelite wrote: post #2

I’ve always wondered about the remaining users of the dial-up service. Who are they and what is the use case for using dial-up? Does anyone know?

There are still a lot of people without access to broadband, or with only one provider which may be expensive.

https://www.benton.org/blog/more-third-americans-have-access...

Starlink is definitely increasing availability but it's somewhat expensive.

Re: AOL to discontinue dial-up internet

#28

Post by throwawayoldie »

drittich wrote: post #24

For younger users of the internet, it's hard to overstate how omnipresent the AOL brand was. The marketing team was on overdrive, all the time. And their marketing CDs probably caused a noticeable increase in CD-ROM adoption.

They also disrupted the coaster industry by constantly mailing out free ones.

Re: AOL to discontinue dial-up internet

#29

Post by protocolture »

londons_explore wrote: post #17
scarface_74 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It couldn’t be too many people. Back in 2015, they only had 2.1 million dial up users and that number must have gone down in a decade https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2025/08/10/aol-dial-up-i... But then again, I would love to have a business that has 2.1 million people or even 100 thousand people paying $10 a month…

Doesn't seem to make sense for AOL to shut it down... I'm sure you could set up a dial up ISP in 2025 with just 1 guy who understands telephony and software modems. Even with 100k customers, I doubt there are more than 0.1% of them connected at a time - the rest will just be paying the bill for a service they don't use.

>I'm sure you could set up a dial up ISP in 2025 with just 1 guy who understands telephony and software modems.

Pretty much. But you might find reliably hardware hard to come by. It would be an ebay operation for sure, sort of like running an internet history museum.

Re: AOL to discontinue dial-up internet

#30

Post by TechDebtDevin »

drittich wrote: post #24

For younger users of the internet, it's hard to overstate how omnipresent the AOL brand was. The marketing team was on overdrive, all the time. And their marketing CDs probably caused a noticeable increase in CD-ROM adoption.

What did those CD's actually contain? A browser with some firmware?
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