2 million people still have dial-up Internet service

About 20 years ago, the AOL startup disc was as ubiquitous as McDonald’s locations. In the era before broadband, AOL was the most dominant Internet service provider with more than 126 million subscribers. I actually worked for PeoplePC for a period of time, and we had the same direct mail initiatives. At that time CD’s were an awesome way to attract new subscribers.

Those days are long gone and with broadband available to most through local cable and telecom providers, nearly 70 percent of households in the U.S. have broadband, according to estimates from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

AOL recently released financial data to shareholders, revealing that it still has more than 2.3 million dial-up Internet subscribers. In the second quarter of this year, AOL said those dial-up customers accounted for $155 million of revenue. By comparison, AOL’s online advertising business brought in $144 million.

AOL’s remaining dial-up customers pay about $21 a month for the service but aside from basic email, those customers are missing out on the modern Internet. Surely none of those customers is streaming Netflix, playing online games or even shopping online with regularity. Even worse, they’re supporting a company which is essentially doing nothing for them at all, aside form keeping their AOL email address.

So if you’re looking to do a good deed this week, make sure no one you know is still trapped in AOL’s dial-up purgatory. If you find someone still serenaded by the screech of a dial-up connection, let them know they’re getting fleeced.

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