AOL will pull the plug on dial-up internet, '90s nostalgia ensues

AOL's dial-up internet, a service that has been running this whole time since the '90s, will be shut down next month.

In a statement published Friday (h/t The New York Times), the pioneering online service provider said it will be pulling the plug on dial-up on Sept. 30.

"AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet. This service will no longer be available in AOL plans," reads the statement.

AOL also stipulated that its AOL Dialer software and Shield browser will also be discontinued, and that for customers, "This change will not affect any other benefits in your AOL plan."

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, will be nostalgic for many who'd recognise that array of sign-on sounds anywhere.

It was an era when pagers were everywhere, tech commercials were a whole new beast, Spice Girls, Boyz II Men, and The Bodyguard soundtrack topped the charts, Terminator 2: Judgment Day hasta la vista-ed the box office, and early internet users charged onto AOL Instant Messenger after school (AOL killed off AIM in 2017 and the online mourning was loud). You might have relished in the novelty of pre-social media chat rooms with complete strangers or friends you'd literally just said goodbye to on the bus — and if you haven't seen the AIM episode of PEN15, do it. Internet speeds might have been snail-paced, but early internet service providers like AOL opened up a world of online connection (and begrudgingly shared computer time rosters) in millions of households.

Once broadband hit the scene in the 2000s, dial-up took a dive, but AOL kept its service available.

AOL dial-up also pervaded popular culture, most notably Nora Ephron's impeccable 1998 film You've Got Mail, named for the service's signature email voice alert, in which Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks' characters fall in love unseen over email. In a 1998 CNET article, then-AOL spokeswoman Wendy Goldberg told the publisher that You've Got Mail marked "the first time in a movie when the internet is not a 'thing.' It's a normal part of people's lives...We worked with [the movie's creators] to make the AOL experience that you'll see in the movie something that our members will see as realistic as possible."

Might be the perfect day for a rewatch.