AOL is shutting down the dial-up service that introduced homes across the US to the internet.<\/p>\n
The firm’s dial-up offering connects to the internet via a phone line and currently only exists in the US and Canada.<\/p>\n
Launched more than 30 years ago, AOL dial-up was known for its chirpy whirring start-up sound, but it has long since been replaced by faster alternatives.<\/p>\n
Fewer than 300,000 people in the US reported having only a dial-up internet connection, compared with more than 300 million with broadband service, according to 2023 government estimates. <\/p>\n
“AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet, ” the company said in a notice to subscribers in the US and Canada on Friday. <\/p>\n
The service will no longer be available in AOL plans as of 30 September, the firm added.<\/p>\n
“Thanks for the memories RIP,” wrote AOL co-founder Steve Case, who presided over the firm’s growth in the 1990s.<\/p>\n
The company was known for luring customers by mailing them free trial discs<\/a> and at one point claimed ownership of nearly 40% of the time that Americans spent online<\/a>.<\/p>\n AOL, which merged with Time Warner in 2000 in a deal widely deemed disastrous, boasted more than 30 million subscribers at the end of 2001<\/a>.<\/p>\n But its lead had already started to be eroded, as broadband offerings from rivals started to gain traction. As early as 2003, obituaries for dial-up service had begun, as in a Wall Street Journal article that declared<\/a>: “It’s official. Dial-up is dying.”<\/p>\n In the UK, AOL was toppled from the top spot as internet service provider<\/a> in 1999. It then sold its UK arm in 2006<\/a>.<\/p>\n Time Warner spun off AOL in 2009. It was acquired by Verizon in 2015, which saw value in its mobile technology business and later merged it with Yahoo. <\/p>\n Today, AOL and Yahoo are owned by Apollo Global.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AOL is shutting down the dial-up service that introduced homes across the US to the internet. The firm’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[85,123,46,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-1682","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-internet","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}