In the modern era where fibre optic connections are the norm for wired Internet while those with some fancy cash could opt for satellite alternatives such as Starlink, you’d be surprised to hear that AOL is finally shutting down, its, uh, dial-up internet service.
According to one report by PC Gamer, you’d still be able to find around 1.5 million users still rocking that 56kb connection 10 years back, but by 2021, only a given “low thousands” were still using it. For a technology that was first commercialized back in 1991, one could only imagine in a highly digitalized world, there are still people living in rural or remote areas, dependent on the “noisy beep boop startup-o-tronic” to stay connected with one another.
However, since the US is the US, there are still other brands offering dial-up services, albeit no one knows if competitors would gobble up this pie of the market share or simply follow AOL’s step of slowly putting the dial-up tech to sleep for real.
