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 support document
I’ve seen a few publications writing derisively about this, surprised dial-up internet is still a thing, but I think that’s misguided and definitely a bit elitist. In a country as large as the United States, there’s bound to be quite a few very remote and isolated places where dial-up might be the best or even only option to get online. On top of that, I’m sure there are people out there who use the internet so sparingly that dial-up may suit their needs just fine.
I genuinely hope this move by AOL doesn’t cut a bunch of people off of the internet without any recourse, especially if it involves, say, isolated and lonely seniors to whom such changes may be too difficult to handle. Access to the internet is quite crucial in the modern world, and we shouldn’t be ridiculing people just because they don’t have access to super high-speed broadband.
Thom Holwerda,
At least with dialup you can call up a new provider (hopefully in your local calling plan). I think the bigger problem may be rural homes loosing access to the telephone/DSL networks. Those people are boned. When my parents were in rural California, they could not get residential broadband/phone service at home. The neighbors had local voice/DSL service on grandfathered plans, but every time someone new moved in ATT would disconnect and refuse service. It’s clear they didn’t want to provide rural service and it only happened because of government mandates. The same group often lacks good cell service. Much of the area did not have cell coverage either, but by coincidence my parents were within a km of a tower. I don’t know what they would have done otherwise. Apparently tenants have satellite rights per FCC.
https://namso-gen.co/blog/can-a-landlord-deny-satellite-dish-installation/
Even where I live, it’s a monopoly with no competition, we pay relatively high prices and get relatively bad service. Then I hear about people who get 500mbps/1gbps and it not even being a bit deal.
I’ve got to say, it’s commendable that they’ve kept it going this long.
I wonder how much it cost per month in recent times…I’d imagine that one of the reasons it’s being shut down is Starlink, no?
johnflorin,
The basic AOL dialup plan was $10/mo (plus whatever the POTS line itself costs). But the service reportedly had very few takers.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/03/aol-1point5-million-people-still-pay-for-service-but-not-for-dial-up-internet.html
Starlink plans are significantly more expensive, plus at least hundreds of dollars for equipment and possibly more for installation…but obviously we’re talking apples and oranges, haha.
https://www.cleartelecommunications.com/post/starlink-cost
There are no more broadband dead zones in the US now that Starlink works.
runciblebatleth,
Yeah, ironically there may be less congestion and better service in rural areas, which is good for them because they typically get overlooked.
https://whatisstarlink.com/starlink-speed-test-real-results-from-different-locations/
The bandwidth numbers are good. In and around cities ISPs will likely offer more bandwidth with less congestion for lower cost, especially if you are lucky enough to have fiber. But in rural areas this could be the best option by far. The added latency is a con and will inevitably introduce more delay in interactive sessions (think SSH/VOIP/gaming/seeking in streams/etc). But that’s what you get for bouncing signals into space. It’s not clear to me whether the latency on starlink becomes worse during periods of congestion. But for non-interactive purposes it probably doesn’t matter.
How about Alaska? I know Starlink isn’t available in Sweden because we are too far north.
I know a guy in Alaska using it. Support for Alaska and northern latitudes was part of the requirements placed by the FCC to launch the constellation.
Perhaps we are too woke then?
Does anybody know more about this specific browser or how it generally this dial-up service was still being used? A local e-mail client might still handle text-only mail pretty good, but I don’t see a typical website loading in a reasonable amount of time over such a connection.
The kind of person who is using dial-up is probably using it for government websites and a few other lightweight websites. Also, they are probably using the internet as a service to get information they want, not for entertainment, so they will wait for things to happen, kind of like waiting for a bank clerk to finish doing things IRL.
Most modern websites will time-out requests on such slow connections.
Image how much better the Internet would be if people still had speed and optimization front of mind when building stuff. These days web pages number in the hundreds of MB to function. Most of that is just laziness.
Even OS News itself downloads nearly 5MB. My personal site only needs less than 800 KB and is still fully functional while looking nice/modern.
How many KB is OSNews without all the ads? Much of the bloat in modern websites is due to the fact ad slots load a third-party JavaScript which then has full freedom to download stuff as it pleases.
It’s based on WordPress so it’s going to be fairly large even without ads. It would be nice if they can eventually move to a framework-less version of the site again, but that’s a ton of work to build and maintain, and it’s a very small team.
I’m guilty of defaulting to WordPress most of the time when people ask me to build websites for them because 99% of the time, between the framework itself and the oodles of awesome plugins, it covers all their needs. If they need something bespoke AND they someone to maintain it for them, I point them to more talented and capable people than myself.
Morgan,
I am quite proficient at building websites that don’t rely on bloated frameworks, but the demand for custom websites has fallen off a cliff 🙁 Almost 100% of the market has migrated to one of the popular platforms. The long tail for web development is practically dead. I’d still do it if clients requested a custom website, but the vast majority of my clients have moved away from this.
An 800KB site will still take multiple minutes to load on a typical dialup connection.
I’ve mentioned this in a few places running with this story.
But here we get the crowd is more than just the bustbuy and Walmart shopper— if you’re not on social media services or streaming video, broadband is simply serving (often useless) bling.
A lot of my daily use, on broadband, is behind a text based web bowser or a minimal reboot of a classic. Stripping away the nonsense like flashy images and videos. Ajax and Java and why does my pointer need to change to a cat or owl or whatever else.
So many laugh or pity those on dialup but if you aren’t using those categories or gaming etc…
Even the longest Wikipedia pages or massive newspaper articles load quickly at 33-56k.
I have long felt the Internet has turned into the vegas strip for no reason whatsoever.