AOL’s dial-up Internet, a service that’s been running since the 1990s, will be shut down next month. The pioneering service provider said it will be pulling the plug on dial-up on September 30th. The news that AOL dial-up has been chugging along this whole time might come as a surprise to some. The service launched in 1991 and will be nostalgic for many who would recognize that array of sign-on sounds anywhere. It was an era when pagers were everywhere, tech commercials were a whole new beast, Spice Girls and Boyz II Men topped the charts, and early Internet users charged onto AOL Instant Messenger after school. Internet speeds might have been snail-paced, but early Internet Service Providers like AOL opened up a world of online connection in millions of households. Once broadband hit the scene in the 2000s, dial-up took a dive, but AOL kept its service available. Who could forget the 1998 film You’ve Got Mail, named for the service’s signature email voice alert? Someday in the not-too-distant future, kids will be scratching their heads, looking at dial-up Internet service pretty much the way their parents looked at a rotary dial phone.
