Supposedly there are actually still around 300,000 total dial up accounts (some sources say 175,000 households but I prefer the account measure)

In the 2016 era I still only had dial up.
There was a rare device that broadcast dialup to WiFi, it was discontinued when I tried to buy one, might still have $4.95 dialup had I been able to get a dialup WiFi bridge.

I still have the aol email account from my childhood to this day, my isp into the mid 2ks settled on all2easy

Sad to see it go since many areas are far to expensive to use anything else.

Now that the physical ringer issue with speeds above 56k no longer exists, too bad the remaining landline folk don’t allow the full 256k theoretical as “dialup “ to give the internet monopolies some competition.

Heck, dsl doesn’t really even exist here anymore.

Back in the day I had $9.99 DSL , unfortunate cheap slow dsl is gone as well

Dial-up becomes kind of ridiculous when the legacy telephone system doesn't even exist any more.

Even more so when I go out of my way to setup VoIP ATAs to continue to use it in spite

Oh, wow. In my country is dial-up long gone. But honestly, sometimes I miss it.

How much did all this cost?

Grunt wrote on 2025-08-11, 19:05:

Oh, wow. In my country is dial-up long gone. But honestly, sometimes I miss it.

Same here, gone like 10-15 years already. I'm surprised it has lasted as long as it has in other parts of the world.

I think rural US is where it's mostly still in use. Those far-flung places where no other reliable information services exist beyond legacy telephone and spotty cell coverage, or are very expensive.

In my area, we have all the modern options (I'm on fiber), but there are towns around me where DSL is the only thing available and legacy telephone is still alive and well. Even then, many around here in those areas are using Starlink. A local phone carrier still offered dial-up until about 5 years ago, for something like $8.99 a month.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2025-08-11, 17:34:

Dial-up becomes kind of ridiculous when the legacy telephone system doesn't even exist any more.

Arguably it ceased to exist in the 70s and 80s when the trunk lines went digital. 56K was dependent on this.

StriderTR wrote on 2025-08-11, 19:46:

I think rural US is where it's mostly still in use. Those far-flung places where no other reliable information services exist beyond legacy telephone and spotty cell coverage, or are very expensive.

In my area, we have all the modern options (I'm on fiber), but there are towns around me where DSL is the only thing available and legacy telephone is still alive and well. Even then, many around here in those areas are using Starlink. A local phone carrier still offered dial-up until about 5 years ago, for something like $8.99 a month.

While POTS is still around, I can't imagine dialup web is at all useful? Who is going to wait 5 minutes every time they navigate pages?

If you had to use dialup, seems some kind of VDI with a heavily compressed stream of the screen would be the way to go. Or ssh of course.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2025-08-11, 17:34:

Dial-up becomes kind of ridiculous when the legacy telephone system doesn't even exist any more.

DSL and landlines are the same technology in most markets.

My mom still has copper wire phone.

68 million landlines (not voip) so still worth supporting for rural regions that have horrifying internet options

jakethompson1 wrote on 2025-08-11, 23:18:

While POTS is still around, I can't imagine dialup web is at all useful? Who is going to wait 5 minutes every time they navigate pages?

If you had to use dialup, seems some kind of VDI with a heavily compressed stream of the screen would be the way to go. Or ssh of course.

Yeah, exactly. I would take modern “ hippie web developers” and I would show them how their animated colour creations work on a dial-up connection. Yes, dial-up is long gone but even in Europe (let's say in rural areas) there is still only GPRS (64kbps maximum speed I belive) available and as already said, It's unusable for anything other than ssh or other text services.

StriderTR wrote on 2025-08-11, 19:46:

A local phone carrier still offered dial-up until about 5 years ago, for something like $8.99 a month.

Wait, wasn't it charged per minute used but on monthly basis?

I never used AOL dialup, I too subscribed to a local ISP that offered unlimited dialup internet for $20/month while AOL was metered.

300,00 active dialup accounts? How do you use today's modern bloated web at 56K? Youtube? Netflix? Is this what they use in hell?

Still to this day YouTube produces 144p format with bit-rate just under 56kbps:

602 mp4 256x144 15 │ ~ 11.20MiB 85k m3u8 │ vp09.00.10.08 85k video only 269 mp4 256x144 30 │ ~ 20.8 […]
Show full quote

602 mp4 256x144 15 │ ~ 11.20MiB 85k m3u8 │ vp09.00.10.08 85k video only
269 mp4 256x144 30 │ ~ 20.87MiB 158k m3u8 │ avc1.4D400C 158k video only
160 mp4 256x144 30 │ 7.04MiB 53k https │ avc1.4D400C 53k video only 144p, mp4_dash
603 mp4 256x144 30 │ ~ 22.48MiB 171k m3u8 │ vp09.00.11.08 171k video only
278 webm 256x144 30 │ 9.58MiB 73k https │ vp09.00.11.08 73k video only 144p, webm_dash
394 mp4 256x144 30 │ 9.56MiB 73k https │ av01.0.00M.08 73k video only 144p, mp4_dash
229 mp4 426x240 30 │ ~ 36.13MiB 274k m3u8 │ avc1.4D4015 274k video only
133 mp4 426x240 30 │ 13.39MiB 102k https │ avc1.4D4015 102k video only 240p, mp4_dash

So technically it might work. Unfortunate there is no more dial-up to test it.

Dialup would be pretty much useless for anything other then email these days. I used dialup provided with Prodigy (2400 baud) back when I purchased a new 286. After that I get on the internet using the local BBS (14.4K then 28K baud with a SLIP account (Rusty & Edies) and finally I went with AT&T Worldnet (56K baud) until Time Warner cable came out here with Roadrunner Cable modems around 2000.

I knew plenty of people on AOL and I think I still have some of their CDs and disks sitting around here somewhere. ISDN was too pricey back in the day and speeds were only 128KB (2x64K channels but they were digital so constant speed).

I guess stock prices for HughesNet will jump a few cents now that people out in hillbilly country will need Satellite Internet.

I was looking at Internet for some property I bought for cameras and local WiFi. Its right across the river in a no traffic light "town" of 100 people. Satellite too much money, noticed suprisingly 5g was available since it has frontage to the main road so cell towers available. $20 a month for a us mobile unlimited plan.

At my parents place they were finally able to get dsl 15yrs ago and then 7yrs or so they were able to switch to cell antennae with 2 bars reception and sometimes a bar with their phone if they stand in the right place or walk halfway down their driveway. Their current cell ATT internet is 32-54 Mbps down which they pay $50 a month for...which I think they said ATT was getting rid of in their area. The DSL was 2mb down on a good day when it was working, streaming 720p was feasible with buffering. No real complaints from then on the cell connection except when the grandkids visit and complain which I think is mostly due to them roblox gaming while streaming netflix in combination with cell latency.

If ATT does pull support I'll just set them up with an antennae and a us mobile cell plan, satellite ....and cell prices are ridiculous.

Its likely those that were still using aohell 😉 were just using the AOL specific apps or paying and not using it.

I was right. This is how they use the web in hell.

In Chrome under dev tools I went to Network>Network Conditions and added a new profile under network throttling for 56K (I set the speed for 56Kup/56Kdown).

Vogons clocked in at 26.56 seconds.

Youtube's home page took much longer to load (2.3 minutes)

Search took about 60 seconds but videos were at the lowest quality and despite this kept buffering/stuttering.

Email might work but it would have to be an email client not webmail.

Try the mobile page of vogons and see if there is a difference.
Those pics aren't modem friendly 😉

rmay635703 wrote on 2025-08-12, 00:32:

68 million landlines (not voip) so still worth supporting for rural regions that have horrifying internet options

Unfortunately superfluous with the advent of satellite internet. Starlink is the market breakthrough of acceptable broadband speeds, and soon more companies will enter the fray and prices will drop.

I don't like this, but it's the reality.

I believe in having really good nation-level real copper wire telephone networks as a communications backbone that is independent of the internet. It's as much a matter of national security as it is having really good telephone service that isn't crappy VoIP. But no one really cares, and everyone who's in a position to make decisions is non-technical and thinks the more complex a system, the better.

DosFreak wrote on 2025-08-12, 17:05:

Try the mobile page of vogons and see if there is a difference.
Those pics aren't modem friendly 😉

Setting user agent to IPhone/Chrome shaved off a few milliseconds.

Wow, I honestly didn't know it was still operating.

I live in a small town and we've had cable internet for something like 24 years. I know of people in the real rural areas that have had to use DSL all this time (3mbps max... usually less), but I can't imagine trying to use dial-up for modern internet.

Before we got rid of it our dial-up connected at 24.6k, presumably because the infrastructure was so outdated. Moving to 768kbps cable was like flying to the moon or something... felt totally unreal to watch websites just open up when you click them, download patches\demos in minutes rather than overnight (with Getright to allow you to pause and resume the download the NEXT night), to join game servers without having to look for that ONE server with sub-200 ping, and to be able to do all of those things without interrupting our ability to take phone calls.

I actually worked at a computer shop back in the early 2000s that was the local billing location for the popular dial-up service in the area. We took the payments, often in cash, punched some stuff in on the computer and kept people connected. We also handed out the floppy disks with the automated installation software for the internet service.

I remember when computers would come in for repair and had AOL installed on them it was like the biggest joke to us teenage, immature PC enthusiasts. "Ugh! I know why it doesn't work!", "Oh man, I figured out why they're complaining it's slow, and why it has so much spyware!" , "You've got.... hang on... it's still loading... mail!"

ahh... those were... days. 🤣