AOL to discontinue dial-up internet service after 34 years

Comments

• shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  To be honest, I’m surprised it lasted this long.

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  • Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Funny thing is dialup has been non viable for ~15 years if not more where I live. When you can get 100 mbit fibre for like $5 a month and it costs a whopping $12.5 dollars a month for a 1000 mbit fibre line, it makes no economic sense to offer dialup.

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    • black_flag@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Where the fuck do you get fiber for $12/month?? Not in the US I assume.

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    • roofuskit@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      The are large portions on the US where there’s dialup or satellite only.

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  • atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I read like 10 years ago that a small but still double digit percentage of their income still came from dial-up subscribers many of whom didn’t still use the service. It was speculated at the time that many of these people simply didn’t realize they were still paying for it. I’m guessing they all finally died or credit card numbers changed enough that it wasn’t free money for them anymore.

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  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Every rural house gets a phone line, just like they all get roads and mail

    It’s not profitable, but that didn’t matter because it was a utility

    With Broadband, it’s a “luxury” so to get it out to a clump of rural users, they all need to pay for it, or wait and hope someone else pays to get it closer.

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    • BD89@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      The government gave them $400 Billion dollars to do it and they pocketed the money.

      huffpost.com/…/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_583939…

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    • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Not anymore. Now the cell phone company just puts up a tower and runs one fiber line to it and everybody has high speed internet or a rich billionaire launches some satellites into space on his rockets.

      Laying one fiber line to a cell phone tower is much cheaper than laying a bunch of fiber lines to each individual household.

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  • moseschrute@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    That’s like Netflix discontinuing their dvd service only a few years ago

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• Spacehooks@reddthat.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Imagine how much it sucks for the person that is using dial up. Like we know they had zero alternatives.

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• Colonel_Panic_@eviltoast.org ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  TIL AOL Dial up is still a thing.

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• TuffNutzes@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  What year is it?!

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• MCasq_qsaCJ_234@lemmy.zip ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Meanwhile, MSN Dial-Up still exists for some reason, you could say it’s the COBOL of Microsoft.

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• black_flag@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  End of an era

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• BagOfHeavyStones@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  +++ATH

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• darkdemize@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Goodbye.

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• stoly@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  AOL was founded in 1983 and dial-up would have been the only way to access it. These dates are suspect.

  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL

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  • Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Per your own link: they started as game delivery service called Control Video Corp and later became an AppleLink service called Quantum Link. They became AOL in 89 when they separated from Apple and offered internet modem pools starting in 91.

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    • stoly@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      oh dear, I just skimmed for the founding date.

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• youngalfred@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  that sound

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• manxu@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Man, AOL is so anachronistic, I thought for sure they had just misspelled AOC and was wondering why she had offered dial-up internet service in the first place.

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