Jauhn Etienne Villaruel

Article (news)

Computer

Agence France-Presse

<div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1754962279809cropped-cropped-pexels-anastasia-latunova-66354443-10251355.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib"/><span class="fr-inner" style="text-align:left">Old computer. Anastasia Latunova, Pexels</span></span></span></div><p>WASHINGTON, United States — The ear-piercing beeps, squeals and buzzes of 90s-era dial-up internet will vanish from thousands of holdout American homes in September as historic provider AOL shuts down the service.</p><p>The raucous sounds of modems establishing their connection to distant servers marked a generation of internet users and still pop up in memes to this day.</p><p>It also made AOL one of the biggest tech firms of the era, but in the following decades the dial-up connections were steadily replaced with much faster ADSL and then fibre-optic lines.</p><p>&quot;AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue dial-up internet,&quot; the pioneering internet service provider (ISP) said in a blog post.</p><p>AOL did not say how many users would be affected by the September 30 shutoff.</p><p>CNBC reported that numbers using dial-up had fallen from around 2.1 million in 2015 to just a few thousand in 2021.</p><p>AOL merged with Time Warner in a 2001 mega-deal worth $162 billion at the peak of the dotcom bubble.</p><p>After splitting off again, it was sold to Verizon in 2015 for a far humbler $4.4 billion.</p><p>AOL was merged with another early internet heavyweight, Yahoo, and sold to the investment fund Apollo Global Management for $5 billion in 2021.</p><p>Its once widely used chat program AIM, launched in 1997 and beloved of early-2000s teens, was shut down in 2017.</p><div><strong>© Agence France-Presse</strong></div><div><br/></div><div><strong>RELATED VIDEO</strong></div><div><br/></div><div><strong><span class="fr-video fr-deletable fr-fvc fr-dvb fr-draggable" contenteditable="false" draggable="true"><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kVKfg2xz0FM?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable"></iframe></span></strong><br/></div>

<p>The raucous sounds of modems establishing their connection to distant servers marked a generation of internet users and still pop up in memes to this day.</p>

The raucous sounds of modems establishing their connection to distant servers marked a generation of internet users and still pop up in memes to this day.

The shrill is gone: AOL to shut down dial-up internet

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The shrill is gone: AOL to shut down dial-up internet

Agence France-Presse

Published Aug 12, 2025 09:33 AM PHT

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