In this day and age of high speed internet from DSL to fiber to the last mile, it is a lesson to be learned that many in the U.S. for various reasons are still on Dialup internet service. For those of you who may be lucky enough to have never experienced dialup, this means you would have a theoretical download speed of 56K. While the number of consumers continues to decrease as the graphs show below, AOL still has to this day has 3.6 million dialup customers.
According to AOL’s earnings release, the “average paid tenure” of its subscribers was about 10.6 years in Q3, up from about 9.4 years last year. But for those who don’t have access to broadband, don’t want it, or don’t need it, AOL is still better than no Internet access. Over the past decade, monthly AOL bills haven’t changed that much, on average: From about $18 in 2001 to $19.30 in 2006 to about $17.50 now.
