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DID YOU KNOW?

AOL Still Has 3.5 Million Dial-Up Subscribers

by Eric Limer | 12:59 pm, November 3rd, 2011

I kid you not: AOL still has 3.5 million loyal dial-up subscribers as of this very moment. Just take a minute to think about all the words in that sentence that are insane, specifically all of them. Dial-up was pretty awful even before there were alternatives, and AOL was pretty awful even in the world of dial-up providers. The fact that AOL has somehow managed to hang on to that many faithful dial-up devotees amazes me.

Granted, AOL still has an overall declining user base. They lost 630,000 subscribers over the past year, but that’s actually their lowest Q3 loss because, I can’t believe I’m saying this, recent promotions have actually brought 200,000 new subscribers to AOL, in 2011. Really though.

Despite the 3.5 million number, which is unbelievably huge considering we’re talking about AOL, the company, on the whole, is a lot smaller than it used to be. Back in the mid-aughties, AOL was shedding subscribers left and right, losing 5 or 6 million customers a year. Now, we’ve dug down to the stalwart few who remain, and I have to wonder if the lion’s share of them just don’t look at their credit card statement very closely (or at all).

If you take a look at AOL’s earnings release, you’ll notice a few other things that are interesting, but let me lay them out for you so you don’t have to look. One is that the average paid tenure of an AOL customer is around 10.4 years. Not only are they still with AOL, but they’ve been putting up with AOL for a decade, on average. There are people who have been there even longer. The other thing is AOL’s prices have hardly changed at all, despite the emergence of vastly superior competition. Well, the emergence of more vastly superior competition. 10 years ago, in 2001, AOL cost $18 a month. Now? $17.50.

I guess they’ll just keep on trucking til they completely lose everyone, but it seems like that might be a while. I just feel like someone has to go and tell those subscribers that they don’t need to get their Internet through a phone line any more. In fact, most phones can surf the Internet better than AOL nowadays. Of course, not everyone needs broadband, but at least check out NetZero or something.

(via Business Insider)

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  • http://www.facebook.com/michael.hails Mike Pants

    I know exactly who is still subscribing to AOL dial-up because my girlfriend’s mother is one of them. It’s very easy to forget that there is a big chunk of the population to whom tech skills do not come easily, if at all. Add in a dash of crippling anxiety about EVERYTHING involving the Internet, like we have with my pre-mother-in-law, and you have a loyal subscriber.

    She doesn’t know how to use Google or the difference between e-mail and a web page, she prints out everything just in case she can never find a web page again, learning what a “browser” was nearly sent her into a panic attack, and if you suggest that she might want to buy something online, she’ll close her bank account in case hackers were listening over the monitor. Seriously.

    But dang it, she knows AOL, and sticking with it is a hell of a lot easier than forcing her to try and figure out how URLs work.

  • Anonymous

    4.8 million households don’t have access to a wireline broadband provider.  In 10 states, the wireline broadband availability rate is less than 90%.  Considering how expensive wireless broadband can be, continued use of dial-up is hardly surprising, especially in lower-income households.

  • http://twitter.com/SE_Norred SE_Norred

    This makes my heart sad.

  • Dump

    My friend uses this. I finally convinced him to get a non-386-base PC and hooked him up with a sweet HP Workstation off of a lease (xw8200 – $600). Nice. But I can’t get him to give up dial-up. He’s a total right-wing nutjob ludite ad thinks the internet is evil. Or something. Oh well.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=687991878 Dave Diem Martinez

    And wireless is not as available as most people think it does. Dial up is still king in the rural areas, sadly.


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