Being in my mid-twenties when I started receiving those AOL discs in the mail. Sometimes they were stacked with the morning newspaper. When I started using AOL, I was living in Northern California. I saw its validity living so far from home. Had we had enough money for my brother to have a computer, we could’ve saved so much money on long distance calls. That was providing you had a local dial in number. In Sacramento, it was difficult to find that one local number that wouldn’t cost you a small fortune.
Believe it or not, in the twenty-five years since I started using AOL, their dial-up service is still around. I couldn’t believe it either until I came across this piece from Engadget. That is until the end of September. The announcement was buried deep in their AOL Help pages. On September 30, 2025, AOL will discontinue its dial-up service, as well as AOL Dialer software and AOL Shield browser.
AOL claims that users for their dial-up service is somewhere in the “low thousands”. To be honest, I am still surprised AOL is still around. Obviously, dial up would be the only source of technology for someone without the ability of broadband service.
However, once I moved into the world of DSL, I no longer tied up the phone line to use the internet. But, around that time, cell phones became more common. For me, after 9/11, we decided that cell phones might be better to stay in touch. In recent years, telecom companies are letting their phone lines fall into disrepair. Many of them are attempting to stop offering landline service.
It does seem weird when anyone has a landline. While it is sad, technology moves forward. You can still find the audio on YouTube.