2.1 Million People In U.S. Still Use AOL Dial-up

By Kamal Nayan - 11 May '15 05:23AM

Around 2.1 million people in the United States still use the AOL dial-up to connect to the Internet. The number was unveiled in AOL's quarterly earnings report last week.

Notably, more than 70 percent Americans connect to Internet over much faster broadband. The average U.S. broadband speed is 11.4 MB per second - 200 times faster than dial-up's 56 kilobits per second.

AOL says its 2.1 million dial-up customers include some subscribers who are paying "reduced monthly fees." There are some who aren't paying at all, because they threatened to leave AOL, so the company gave them a discount. Some users also don't pay AOL at all because they didn't think it made much sense to be paying for dial-up Internet in 2015.

According to a research by Pew Research Center in 2009, 32 percent of dial-up users couldn't afford to upgrade. Majority of people said they broadband either wasn't available -- or they just didn't care to change.

This is certainly sad state of affairs but there's good news - numbers have consistently decline over the past several years. In 2012, the number of subscribers was 3 million and in last August it plummeted to 2.34 million.