October 1, 2025, 9:09 am | Read time: 3 minutes
Internet provider AOL will discontinue its dial-up service at the end of September. Known in Germany as “Wählleitung” or “Einwahl,” this technology dates back to the early years of the internet.
Early internet users will fondly remember the quirky sounds of a dial-up modem. The unique tone sequence was used to establish a connection with an internet access node. What seems like Stone Age technology today sparked a digital revolution back then: access to the World Wide Web for the masses.
AOL to End Dial-up Support in October
AOL’s dial-up service launched in 1991 and is still available in the U.S. Although the company has long been part of Yahoo, it continued to offer plans for users of the outdated dial-up method. AOL also maintained the dialer software and the corresponding Shield browser.
Read more: What Ever Happened to AOL?
However, this will come to an end on September 30. As AOL announced on its help page for North American customers, the software necessary for dial-up will no longer be supported starting in October:
AOL regularly evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue dial-up internet access. This service will no longer be offered in AOL plans. Therefore, this service and the associated software, the AOL dialer software and the AOL Shield browser, which are optimized for older operating systems and dial-up internet connections, will be discontinued on September 30, 2025.
Dial-up Internet Long Obsolete in the EU
In the extensive Eurostat statistics of the European Commission, dial-up internet access appeared in usage data until 2015 for countries like Luxembourg and Portugal. Current figures from Statista show that the number of dial-up users in Germany in 2024 is 0 percent.
The U.S. counterpart to Eurostat–called the Census Bureau–shows that in 2019 there were still 260,000 users in the U.S. relying on the outdated technology to go online. With the discontinuation of the AOL dialer, this is likely to come to an end.
Even though dial-up is no longer suitable for the data volumes of the modern internet, it still has uses. In the event of an internet outage, the technology can serve as a backup. It also remains an option in regions where only analog phone lines are available. However, there are much faster alternatives, such as mobile and satellite internet, which are becoming increasingly available.