It's been over four decades since the internet was officially invented, yet it wasn't until one key feature introduced around ten years later that it really began to take off, and now, that very feature is about to be shut down for good.
High speed internet is commonplace now, and it's not out of the ordinary for people across the world to be able access download speeds of over a gigabit per second, making downloading the latest films and games a breeze.
There are even options like Elon Musk's Starlink that allow people to use satellites to receive a high speed internet connection in places where that would otherwise be impossible, as shown by the billionaire's awkward gaming stream on a private jet.
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You don't have to go back too far into the past to see a different story though, as internet hasn't always been the reliable and speedy service many know it as today — yet the feature that brought the world wide web to millions across America is set to shut down next month.
What iconic internet feature is being shut down?
As reported by the Independent, AOL has announced that it is officially discontinuing support for its dial-up internet service on September 30, 2025, 34 years after it was first introduced.
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While there is now an entire generation of adults that never properly experienced the woes of dial-up internet, it was the feature that allowed people to embrace the web in the 1990s and early 2000s, albeit at an incredibly slow crawl.
It is best remembered for the anticipation you would have when seeing an image slowly load over the course of several minutes, alongside the absolutely iconic dial-up sound you'd receive when connecting that's hard to forget.
For comparison, dial-up internet typically reached a max speed of 56 kilobits per second, although people typically experienced drops to 40 kbps on average.
According to BandwidthPlace, the median download speed across the United States in 2023 was 213.75 Mbps, meaning that it's roughly 3,817 times faster that the maximum that dial-up could achieve.
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To download a 50 gigabyte video game on dial-up internet it would take roughly 1,984 hours or 82.6 days, so it's probably a good thing that people have long abandoned the service.
How many people will this affect?
Despite the dramatic improvements made to broadband speeds and availability across the America, the United States Census Bureau estimated that there are still around 163,000 households across the country that exclusively rely on dial-up internet.
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While that remains a small fraction of broadband users nationwide, AOL's decision to disable to service will theoretically force a significant to their lives that they might not be prepared to make.
Technology analyst Carmi Levy explained, as per CBC, that the change "isn't going to affect a lot of people, but if you're one of those people who simply never transitioned off, it's pretty seismic.
"It means at the end of September, you're losing the only access to the internet that you've ever known."