AOL has announced it will officially discontinue its dial-up internet service on September 30, 2025, marking the end of a technology that once defined the online experience for millions since its launch in 1991.
In a statement on its website, the Yahoo-owned company said:
“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. As a result, on September 30, 2025, this service and the associated software, the AOL Dialer software and AOL Shield browser, which are optimized for older operating systems and dial-up internet connections, will be discontinued.”
While some may be surprised the service was still running, data from the 2019 U.S. Census showed roughly 265,000 Americans were still using dial-up at that time. Many of them, like long-time subscribers from the early internet era, kept the service as a “security blanket” — reluctant to cancel due to email addresses, online communities, or financial accounts tied to AOL.
For those users, AOL’s shutdown will mark more than the end of a connection method; it’s the close of a cultural chapter in the history of the internet — one that arrives just as the online landscape undergoes other seismic changes, such as the decline of the ad-supported web.
