Say bye-bye to the beeps and boops of AOL’s dial-up internet service : NPR

The AOL logo is presented on a wall from the company’s New York office on May 12, 2008.

Mark Lennihan / AP

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Mark Lennihan / AP

Beep, BOP, BOOP, BOOOOPP, SCRSSSSHH…

This was the sound of AOL’s dial-up service, a marker to try to connect to the Internet in the 1990s. Now the company has announced that it would get rid of dial-up.

“AOL regularly assesses its products and services and has decided to stop Internet Dial-up,” says its website.

The service will take place until September 30. NPR efforts to reach AOL to comment have failed.

What is Dial-up?

Dial-UP uses a modem to convert digital data from an audio signal computer, which can then travel on standard telephone lines, said W. Patrick McCray, technological historian at the University of California in Santa Barbara.

Users must connect their computers to a telephone socket and install software that allows the computer and the numbering service to communicate.

The process led to a robotic and statistical noise.

“In some ways, it was a bit like the sound of the 1990s,” said McCray.

But it had its disadvantages, such as users who cannot use the phone and the Internet at the same time. He also had a fraction of the speed available in today’s internet landscape. The download of a song took several minutes and the download of a film was unknown, said McCray.

AOL’s meaning on the Internet

AOL deployed its dialogue service in 1991, when legislators focused on closing the “digital fracture”, the idea that people living in poorer or more rural areas would not have equitable internet access, said McCray.

The company was known to have distributed discs and CDs that gave users for free for several hours of internet access. They were so anchored in the American culture of the 1990s that one of these discs is now in the Smithsonian collection. CDs can be purchased in lots on eBay.

Dial-up was considered accessible at the time, as it requires fixed technology that many Americans already had. However, it was largely replaced by wide -band Internet, which does not have such an extensive infrastructure.

In 2022, 0.1% of American households relied on Dial-UP to access the Internet, according to the souped of the American Census Bureau community.

“For people who live in these rural communities today, they will have to find an alternative,” said McCray.

AOL did not present Dial-UP, but it has become popular because of its ease of use and its interface, which included things like news and emails on the home page, said McCray.

AOL claims that the other advantages of members will not be affected by the Dial-UP stop.