A Big Piece of Internet History Is About to Disappear AOL announced that it is discontinuing its dial-up internet service in September.

If you are old enough to remember the signature pinging, boinging, and hissing sounds that came with connecting to the Internet in the early days, hold onto those memories — AOL just announced that its dial-up is about to hang up forever.

The company released a statement on Friday, which read: "AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet."

The service and all associated software will stop working on September 30, 2025, the company added.

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Wait, AOL dial-up service has been available all this time? That's a valid question, and the answer is shockingly yes. The New York Times, citing U.S. Census Bureau data, reports that in 2023, 163,000 United States households relied on dial-up service to access the internet. That represents just over 1 percent of all internet subscribers in the country.

The last time AOL released dial-up user numbers was in 2015, when the company reported two million users that represented $40 million a month in revenue. The company did not offer current user numbers with its closing announcement.

AOL's dial-up service unlocked internet access for millions of users in the 1990s, and its signature "You've Got Mail" sign-on announcement was so iconic that it spurred a rom-com of the same name starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan as a couple who fall in love over instant messaging.

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While the closure is sure to inspire a wave of nostalgic thinkpieces about a happier time of the internet's existence, Gen Xers should remember that the web might have seemed nicer than what we have today, but it was insanely slower. Dial-up internet speeds average about 56 kilobytes a second, reports The Times. Typical broadband connections are several thousand times faster. Think about that the next time you're frustrated that a web page took more than half a second to load.

End of an Era…

Dial Up Internet will be discontinued by AOL on September 30, 2025 pic.twitter.com/MXn5t4MzJv

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