AOL announces September shutdown for dial-up Internet after 34 years

After 34 years of connecting Americans to the Internet through phone lines, AOL recently announced it is shutting down its dial-up modem service on September 30, 2025. The announcement marks the end of a technology that served as the primary gateway to the World Wide Web for millions of users throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.

AOL confirmed the shutdown date in a help message to customers: "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."

AOL's dial-up service launched as "America Online" in 1991, when the Internet consisted primarily of text-based content, although its dial-up roots extend back to a service launched in 1985 called Quantum Link for Commodore computers. For the next few years, as the World Wide Web emerged, websites were measured in kilobytes, images were ...