AOL is suspending its telephone access service, which helped millions of homes connect with the web during the years of Internet formation and was instantly recognizable for its call -up tone loaded with beeps and healthy in the nineties and early 2000s.
The company, which once dominated as the world’s largest Internet provider, confirmed the transfer to CBC News on Sunday, saying that it would suspend telephone access as a subscription option on September 30 “while we innovate to meet the needs of the current digital panorama.”
Telephone access services were a pillar of the first internet, as shown in the 1998 romantic comedy You’ve got mail – And involved using a telephone line to connect devices to the web. Those of a certain age will remember that this meant choosing between their landline and their Internet access.
The company, which offered the service to customers in Canada and the USA, did not offer details about its existing telephone access customers. With broadband Internet access much more speed now the standard for the web connection in North America, the end of the telephone access service raises the question of who was using it.
“There are many parts of the Rural area of Canada that do not yet have reliable access or no access to high -speed Internet connectivity. And for them, telephone access is their only alternative,” said technology analyst Carmi Levy in an interview with CBC News.
“There are a number of regional or local actors throughout the country that still provide access to low -cost telephone access. The problem here is that the base, Internet, as we know it, is no longer built for access to telephone access. Therefore, it is a technology that time has really happened,” said Levy.
According to a CRTC report published earlier this year, 95 percent of Canadians have high -speed Internet access. But broadband coverage in the three territories of the country, as well as in rural areas and in the reserves of the first nations, is still up to date with the rest of Canada.
CBC News communicated with the CRTC to ask how many Canadians are still using telephone access services, which is under the “fixed Internet” umbrella that tracks the regulator. Data from the United States Census Office My dear that around 163,000 homes were using telephone access exclusively for the Internet service in 2023.
“This will not affect many people, but if you are one of those people who simply never made the transition, it is quite seismic,” Levy added. “It means that at the end of September, you are losing the only Internet access that you have met.”
Canada’s main telecommunications are expanding fiber optic networks for Internet connectivity because they are able to transfer data at high speeds and tend to be profitable. Satellite services, including Spacex Starlink, are also sometimes also used for high -speed internet in rural and remote areas.
Dana Ditomaso, technology analyst in Victoria, says that satellite coverage is not always reliable or satisfactory in less populated areas. “Especially if it is mountainous or there are many trees, even the satellite Internet will not work so well because you need a clear line for the satellite,” he said.
That’s where there could be the gap full of telephone access services, but Ditomaso does not expect any rebirth of nostalgia fed technology.
“It won’t be like vinyl records, and people say: ‘I really want that telephone access experience,’ you know?” She said.
“It is people who have to have telephone access, not because they want to have telephone access.”
