Question

AOL is discontinuing dial up internet as of September 30th 2025?

As of today September 30th 2025 the company AOL is ending and shutting down their dial up service that was started in 1991.

AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet.

This 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.

AOL dialup internet began in the year of 1991, following AOLs 1989 renaming from Quantum Computer Services to America Online and their initial focus on online services instead of just direct internet access.

https://help.aol.com/articles/dial-up-internet-to-be-discontinued

I remember using AOL back in the day and remember that dialup dialing sound and the You've Got Mail.

AOL was my first access to the internet on an old Windows 98 desktop computer.

Answer 1

I also remember using AOL dialup when I got my first computer in 2001.

I was using an old emachines desktop computer with Windows 98 and I was so excited about being online.

I was 13 years old at the time and I would be online at night and eventually mom got a $500.00 phone bill and was wondering why it was so high.

I was me that was running up the bill dialing into long distance numbers with the AOL dialup internet service.

I was using AOL for around a year before I started getting into dialing of those other numbers which ran the phone bill up.

Then finally the person with the phone company told mom that DSL was available and asked if we wanted to sign up.

They said they would cut that bill in half if she signed up and then we would no longer have high phone bills from the dialup internet.

So my mom thankfully signed up and we were paying $35.00 a month for internet and I also got a new better computer was the internet was much better with the DSL.

I would not want to go back to dialup although it was great in it's time.