Yes, AOL Still Has 3.5 Million Dialup Subscribers

By Jake • November 4th, 2011 • 2 Comments

Who are these people? Seriously, do you know anyone who still has AOL dialup?

Amazingly, AOL still has 3.5 million dialup subscribers – SplatF

I’m truly stunned. I guess it makes sense, given the steady cost AOL has maintained over many years and the recent downturn prompting people to cut back on expenses.

Still. I can’t begin to imagine how something like Facebook performs over a 56 bps connection, assuming they can even get that speed. And YouTube, unusable.

Who are these people? I’m guessing they’re not using the modern intertubes very much, and they’re a mighty patient bunch with no other expectation for how fast the intertubes *should* be.

Thoughts?


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  • Gary Myers

    Probably a lot are “pure email”. But a couple of years back I did work with a company which used dialup modem for upload/downloads of price lists between head office and other sites. No internet – just a straight phone-to-phone hookup.

    Made me quite nostalgic. Or was it nausea.

  • http://theappslab.com Jake

    Heh, both start w n. I remember back when I sat at HQ at decade ago, Tim Dexter (of XML/BI Publisher fame) sat over the cube wall from he. He had a modem over there that he used to dial in to customer sites, I think. Or maybe it was something else.

    I was also assuming those 3.5 mm had to be largely email users. I wonder how many also have broadband through another provider. I knew a person who held onto AOL *only* to keep the @aol.com email address s/he’d had forever. S/he eventually got broadband through another ISP and kept the AOL account in tact.