AOL Dial-Up Service to End in 2025: A Nostalgic Farewell to the First Era of Consumer Internet Access
In September 2025, a significant milestone in digital history will be reached as AOL, now under Yahoo’s umbrella, discontinues its dial-up Internet service. This announcement was made in a tech support note titled “Dial-up Internet to be discontinued.”
The notice states that on September 30, 2025, the AOL Dialer software and AOL Shield browser, designed for older operating systems and dial-up internet connections, will no longer be available. The service discontinuation does not affect other products or services offered by Yahoo, nor does it impact free AOL email accounts.
Tech journalist Ernie Smith initially overlooked the notice but later brought attention to it on platforms like Bluesky and Mastodon, sparking reminiscing among users. The note appears to have been posted within the last two weeks, according to Smith’s findings.
A Yahoo spokesperson confirmed that this change does not impact the various other valued products and services offered by the company. However, the exact number of dial-up users remaining is unknown, but it’s likely a small fraction compared to AOL’s peak subscriber base in its heyday.
In 2015, former CEO Steve Case reported that AOL had 25 million subscribers. But by May 2021, CNBC reported that the number of AOL dial-up users had dwindled to the low thousands. This decline began as other companies introduced bundles of dial-up service with simplified Windows and Mac apps, which freed users from additional networking tools and often eliminated hourly connection charges.
AOL’s disastrous merger with Time Warner in 2001 and its ongoing struggle to deliver broadband to customers led to a decline that even acquiring sites like Engadget and TechCrunch couldn’t halt. By 2014, the number of dial-up AOL customers had collapsed to 2.34 million. In 2017, Verizon purchased both AOL and Yahoo but later sold them to private-equity firm Apollo Global Management in 2021.
While the end of AOL’s dial-up service may mark the demise of the oldest form of consumer online access for some, it does not signify its complete extinction. According to estimates from the Census Bureau’s 2023 American Community Survey, 163,401 Americans still connected to the internet via dial-up that year.
This segment was significantly smaller than those subscribing to cable, fiber optic, or DSL (100,166,949), satellite (8,628,648), “Internet access without a subscription” (3,318,901), or “other service” (1,445,135). The remaining AOL dial-up subscribers will need to find alternative solutions, particularly in rural areas where options may be limited to fixed wireless or SpaceX’s Starlink, a considerably more expensive option. Some may even join the ranks of Americans with no internet access (6,866,059) according to these 2023 estimates. For those seeking alternatives, here are recommendations for the Best ISPs of 2025 and popular brands among users.
