{"id":42747,"date":"2025-08-10T07:44:59","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T06:44:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/?p=42747"},"modified":"2025-08-12T09:27:36","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T08:27:36","slug":"after-34-years-aol-finally-closes-its-dial-up-internet-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/index.php\/2025\/08\/after-34-years-aol-finally-closes-its-dial-up-internet-service.html","title":{"rendered":"After 34 Years AOL Finally Closes its Dial-up Internet Service UPDATE"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a somewhat surprising development, mainly because almost everybody assumed it had died a long time ago, AOL<\/a> (America Online) – one of the very first consumer ISPs in both the USA and UK – recently caused a stir again by announcing that it had “decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet<\/em>” on 30th September 2025.<\/p>\n

According to AOL’s website<\/a>: “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<\/em>.” But their email service will continue.<\/p>\n

NOTE:<\/strong> Many dialup<\/a> ISPs in the UK during 1995 – like AOL – used expensive premium rate numbers, although this did soon gravitate to local call rates and then unmetered via FRIACO. The v90 dialup<\/a> standard (56Kbps capable or 0.056Mbps) didn\u2019t arrive until 1998 and by then ADSL<\/a> and cable broadband were just around the corner – ready to revolutionise the market.<\/div>\n

The change appears to have been announced within the past few weeks, although it wasn’t picked up more widely until journalist Ernie Smith<\/a> noted it in a post on Bluesky<\/a>. Just to be clear, the announcement above refers to the USA and Canada. However, we’re fairly confident that what remains of AOL UK (aka – TalkTalk<\/a>) doesn’t have any legacy dial-up customers left, although we would have said the same about the USA and Canada too, until that announcement dropped (dial-up speeds in 2025 would be practically unusable). ISPreview is currently checking, just to be sure.<\/p>\n

In case anybody has forgotten. The original AOL UK experience was somewhat of a walled-garden way of accessing the internet, which forced you to use the company’s own software and restricted your ability to access certain internet services. This had the benefit of simplifying the experience, but AOL later fell behind the curve and ended up being overtaken by rivals.<\/p>\n

The Carphone Warehouse<\/a> (CPW) ultimately won the auction to buy AOL UK\u2019s Internet access business in 2006 for \u00a3370m (note: AOL\u2019s content division became a separate business). At the time, AOL were the UK\u2019s third-largest ISP with around 2.1 million customers<\/strong> (600,000 on dial-up and 1.5 million with broadband) and were later re-branded to AOL Broadband.<\/p>\n

A second big change occurred on 29th March 2010, when CPW and TalkTalk<\/a> separated (demerged) – the latter became a separate business, which included customers from CPW\u2019s prior acquisitions (e.g. AOL Broadband, Tiscali etc.). Several more years passed until May 2014, when TalkTalk<\/a> confirmed that AOL Broadband (formerly AOL UK) had stopped taking on new internet and phone customers (here<\/a>), although no mention was made of the dial-up base.<\/p>\n

We’re certain that plenty of our readers (those now of a certain age group) will have stories to share of the early AOL UK days. Yours truly only used the original service briefly, before promptly switching away as the UK’s then dialup<\/a> (narrowband) internet market became more competitive, affordable and less restrictive. It’s a service I was glad to forget, but it played an important role.<\/p>\n