{"id":58503,"date":"2025-08-10T21:35:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T21:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/58503\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T21:35:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T21:35:09","slug":"aols-dial-up-internet-still-exists-but-not-for-much-longer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/58503\/","title":{"rendered":"AOL’s dial-up internet still exists, but not for much longer"},"content":{"rendered":"

It may have been decades since you last heard the crunching screeches<\/a> of connecting with dial-up Internet, but AOL<\/a> said it will discontinue its dial-up service on September 30, officially marking the end of an era in Internet history. As first spotted by PC Gamer<\/a>, AOL made the surprising announcement in a post buried in its AOL Help pages. Along with the dial-up service, AOL Dialer software and AOL Shield browser will also be discontinued by the end of September.<\/p>\n

It may come as a shock to most that AOL still runs its dial-up Internet service, but some thousands of users<\/a> still rely on this outdated method as an affordable way to access the Internet in more rural areas. However, these user numbers in the “low thousands” are a far cry from AOL’s heyday, which reportedly saw tens of millions of subscribers<\/a>, most likely thanks to the stacks of free trial CDs people would find in their mailboxes. Nowadays, dial-up Internet fails to compete against the likes of much faster broadband options, which include cable, fiber and satellite alternatives.<\/p>\n

Even though AOL’s dial-up service eventually lost relevancy, it stuck around for 34 years before meeting the same fate as other ’90s tech icons like Blockbuster, Discmans and AOL Instant Messenger<\/a>. Now, the only time you’ll really hear that iconic America Online serenade is through recreations on social media<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It may have been decades since you last heard the crunching screeches of connecting with dial-up Internet, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58504,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[47819,47821,64,63,47822,47820,237,47823,17486,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-58503","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-aol","9":"tag-aol-instant-messenger","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-dial-up-internet","13":"tag-dial-up-service","14":"tag-internet","15":"tag-internet-history","16":"tag-internet-service","17":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}