Submitted 3 weeks ago by janus2@lemmy.zip to technology@lemmy.world
After decades of connecting Americans to its online service and the Internet through telephone lines, AOL recently announced it is finally shutting down its dial-up modem service on September 30, 2025. The announcement marks the end of a technology that served as the primary gateway to the World Wide Web for millions of users throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.
Is anyone still using dial-up?
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.
(AP News)
As far as US households, looks like not many. Most likely very remote locations. I had also read that some businesses maintain a dial up connection as a backup for broadband outages
It’s funny that the US still has dial-up. In the Netherlands the last dial-up provider stopped their service on oktober 1st 2021, and that was already late.
I wonder how many of those 164k are people who are still being billed for a service they no longer use.
It’s right in the subheading, first thing.
And the article.
There is probably still a bunch of old people with a dialup subscription that they never canceled.
This, tbh. I did not have this on my 2025 bingo card…
So the eternal september finally ends.
YOU’VE GOT MAIL!
Quick, before it’s gone <<
I can still hear that voice in my head saying it, along with “goodbye!”
RIP, I still remember getting those AOL CDs in the mail, and was so excited by the concept of a disk that could allow me to connect to the world wide web.
My big turn on for AOL is all you needed was a checking account and bam you were in. No credit card required. You still ran out of minutes way too fast.
I remember the 3.5" floppy disks saying “200 free hours!”
I remember drilling out the the write protect hole so I could reuse them. Floppies were expensive and I was broke as a teenager, I loved aol disks.
Goodbye
TIL that AOL is still a thing.
Lol beat me to it!
I think the biggest surprise for me is that there’s still anywhere in the country with genuine actual POTS lines. I thought the Plain Old Telephone Service was dead and that those places that still had phone numbers were six feet of phone line to a VoIP converter box to an internet connection.
Just before my mother retired as a school secretary, she was telling me all the hell they had to go through to keep a fax machine running in the age of IP telephony.
Wire is pretty much never removed once it’s laid out and I’m sure a lot of DSL based internet connections still run over same twisted pair that would have carried POTS lines.
But you’re probably right that there’s a VoIP device keeping these up and working, maybe just more than 6 ft away and instead in some Telco box down the street.
I think POTS installations will remain for decades more in niche cases - emergency backups in elevators, security systems, hospitals, fire departments. And evidently Grandma’s AOL internet connection up until this month haha
I’m honestly impressed it’s still a thing
DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
Wake me up, when September ends.
singletona@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It seems to be ending in twenty eight more days.
Vex_Detrause@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Good bot!