Hanging up: AOL to pull the plug on its dial-up service after 36 years

From the department of "Want to feel old?" comes news that AOL is finally pulling the plug on dial-up Internet access.

While there are very few users in the US who still connect to the Internet via modem and public telephone network, this termination – scheduled for September 30 – feels very much like the end of an era.

Dial-up was, for many, the only way to connect to the Internet before broadband became as ubiquitous as it is today. A user would use a modem, which could encode and decode audio signals, to connect to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) via a conventional telephone line. It wasn't quick, and connections could be affected by noise on the line or someone picking up an extension somewhere else in the house, but it was often all there was.

The advent of broadband signaled the rapid demise of dial-up. Always on and considerably ...