The slow death of dial-up: 2 percent of us still use AOL

According to AOL’s second-quarter earnings report, more than 2.5 million people still subscribe to the Internet company’s services. That represents a drop of 15 percent from the same quarter last year, but it’s still a hefty portion of the country. There are roughly 114 million households in the United States. Do a bit of math, and that works out to roughly 2.2 percent.

Not all of those people are even aware that they’re still paying, which makes AOL’s continued earnings from dial-up services a particularly genius form of memory-hole leeching. But then there are those who either lack access to broadband or can’t afford what’s in their area. About 17 percent of dial-up users say there’s no broadband where they live; 35 percent say the price needs to fall before they’d adopt it. Not everyone contained in AOL’s 2.5 million subscriber figure lives in rural or poor areas. Still, it’s a good reminder that even as much of the country adopts newer broadband technologies, there’s a risk that some might get left behind.

[Aug 7]