AOL says goodbye to dial-up, the sound that defined the early internet in the U.S.
Once the internet’s main gateway for millions in the ’90s and early 2000s, AOL has faded from relevance but remains a nostalgic name in tech history.
If you grew up in the ‘90s, you probably remember that sound, the metallic screech and whistle that meant your computer was about to tiptoe onto the internet’s creaky front porch. That was dial-up. And for a lot of us, AOL (America Online) was the front door.
Now, after decades of hanging around in the background, AOL is finally closing that door. On September 30, dial-up will be gone for good. It’s the end of a chapter that, for many of us, was our very first chapter online.
It’s difficult to explain to someone who didn’t live through it just how central AOL once was. They mailed you endless stacks of free-trial CDs, taught you to type “www” for the first time, and cheerfully greeted you with, “You’ve got mail.” The connection was slow, it hogged the family phone line, and it would vanish the second someone picked up the receiver, but back then, it felt like magic.
Of course, that magic faded fast once broadband and Wi-Fi showed up. Dial-up went from being our online lifeline to something we laughed about. By last year, only about 163,000 U.S. households, mostly in rural areas, were still using it, according to Census Bureau data. For them, AOL’s goodbye isn’t just a bit of nostalgia; it’s a real problem to solve.
Emmanuel Oyedeji
We’ve been watching this slow fade for years. AOL Instant Messenger signed off in 2017. Microsoft has already shelved Internet Explorer and, more recently, Skype. Piece by piece, the early internet we knew is slipping away, leaving behind chat logs, screenshots, and memories.
AOL’s own story is kind of the early commercial internet’s story with explosive growth, a moment of total dominance, and then a long, messy decline. In 2000, it was worth $164 billion. Then came the disastrous Time Warner merger, corporate reshuffles, and now a much smaller life as an email and niche subscription provider.
For most of us, AOL shutting down dial-up won’t change our daily lives. But if you were there, you know it’s more than just a tech update, it’s one more reminder that the internet we grew up with is gone. That hum and hiss once meant you were connecting to something bigger than yourself. Now, it’s fading into silence.
