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Can you play “Danny Boy” over a phone modem? After 34 years in operation, AOL is finally ending its dial-up service. The news is sure to come as a shock to internet users around the country, plenty of whom are probably asking themselves “AOL still had dial-up?”
But if you live in a rural area, it’s not quite as surprising. As someone who has to resort to DSL whenever I visit my in-laws, and who had to fight to get my mom to swap from an AOL browser to Chrome when I was in college, I can see why AOL’s dial-up lasted so long. According to a 2019 US Census, 265,000 people in the United States are still on dial-up, and AOL’s brand in particular came with a certain veneer of familiarity.
The company was known for making easy-to-use products with an emphasis on personality, so it’s funny how little fanfare the shutdown notice came with. In a 100-word blog posted over the weekend, AOL simply said that its dial-up service will “no longer be available in AOL plans” starting on Sept. 30, 2025. Also joining dial-up in the trash bin are the AOL Dialer software you’d actually use to connect, as well as the AOL Shield browser, a stripped-down version of the company’s current, Chrome-like AOL Shield Pro browser, intended for older operating systems and slower connections.
As for what AOL will still offer, it turns out AOL is more of a data security company now, with a number of ID protection features aimed more at businesses than individual users. That said, you can still sign up for a free AOL plan if you’re hankering for a nostalgic email address, although both paid and free users will have to get their actual internet connections from somewhere else going forward.
Still, there is hope for anyone still clinging to a screeching phone modem for their internet connection. Services like Netzero and Juno still offer dial-up plans in certain zip codes, and Netzero will actually connect you for free if you use fewer than 10 hours a month. Click here to check providers in your area.
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Even better, the classic AOL experience isn’t going anywhere. While AOL is ending dial-up service, it will keep offering its AOL Desktop Gold plan, which in addition to including tools to protect you from keyloggers and phishing attempts, also gives you access to the classic AOL browser, as opposed to the more Chrome-ified Shield Pro. It even has the “You’ve got mail” notification.
