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Dial-up Internet is far past its heyday, though it's still hanging on here and there, mostly in places with no wireline broadband options. For those who just check email occasionally, it's still a low-cost option that gets the job down. And in recent years, AT&T's phase out of DSL service in many places has widened the Digital Divide and forced people who previously enjoyed broadband access back to dial-up. As of 2023, an estimated 163,401 or 0.13% of households were using dial-up alone to get online.
And yet, the way that dial-up access works in the United States is extremely poorly understood. This became evident last year when AOL discontinued its dial-up Internet offering on September 30, 2025. The media seized on this topic and sensationalized it as if dial-up was purely some nostalgic trip to the past, rather than a critical connectivity option for many with no other options. Even Linus Tech Tips made a fairly bad video about dial-up, mostly poking fun at it.
Most stories at least correctly reported that only AOL's dial-up access was going away, not dial-up in general. But that's about as much credit as I can give them; by and large, the reporting around dial-up has been incredibly bad. For example, this PCWorld article reported that "a few providers remain - for now", naming Microsoft, Juno, and NetZero as still offering dial-up plans. Most other articles fall into the same trap, citing Juno and NetZero as if they were the last guys standing. They've all missed the forest for the trees.
As the saying often goes, the death of dial-up Internet has been greatly exaggerated. And AOL's dial-up offering was, I hate to say it, nothing unique in 2025. So, why is virtually every media article misleading you when it discusses the current state of dial-up? What's really going on with dial-up, and what providers are left today?
The Myth of the Modern Dial-Up ISP
In the early days of dial-up Internet, back in the 1990s and early 2000s, there truly were a plethora of dial-up ISPs. Individual communities often had their own dial-up ISPs and networks. Competition in the consumer Internet and telecom industry alike were booming, with a truly staggering number of options in some communities. ISPs that had sprung up almost overnight struggled to keep up with the demand.
As dial-up's popularity began to wane, however, this business model made increasingly less and less sense. There are fixed costs to maintaining dial-up access, even for a dwindling number of customers. To provide V.90/V.92 access to enable speeds higher than 33.6, providers need specialized carrier-grade dial-up equipment (for example, the Total Control or Portmaster 3) as well as digital T1 lines from the phone company. All of this is expensive, but when you have a lot of users effectively time sharing your system, you can spread the costs out over enough customers to make a tidy profit. However, as broadband quickly became the norm in many urban and even less urban areas, providers were increasingly unable to justify these costs.
Contrary to the bad reporting by PC World and almost everybody else, there are a myriad of ISPs today still offering dial-up Internet access, typically for about $10 a month. VANet offers 300 hours per month for $9.95 when billed annually. Finest Planet still offered unlimited dial-up for $10 a month until just a few months ago (they don't anymore). There are a few outliers. Panix, for example, charges $32.50 per month for its dial-up access, more than the cost of broadband in many areas. I don't know why anyone would pay that much for dial-up, but maybe there are some takers — who knows!
All of these providers have something in common. Panix, for example, provides a list of all its dial-up access numbers (see text link at bottom). Some of these numbers are now disconnected, but a lot of them still answer with a carrier and still work. Now, take a look at the dial-up access numbers Finest Planet advertised when it offered dial-up. Notice anything interesting?
There are two noteworthy things here. One, despite Panix and Finest Planet being fairly localized ISPs, somehow they provide seemingly nationwide dial-up access in almost every local calling area (you certainly wouldn't want to pay long-distance charges for a long Internet session, would you?) Secondly, there is a huge amount of overlap in the numbers listed. Many numbers are identical, or at least in the same prefixes. For example, (530) 831-0082, an access number in Portola, California, is advertised by both Panix and Finest Planet (formerly). There are many other overlapping numbers and likely many other ISPs advertising the same sets of access numbers. What gives?
The answer is that Panix and Finest Planet both offer (or offered) dial-up access, but they don't (or weren't) operating their own dial-up networks. All of this has long since been outsourced, and the same is true for virtually every single ISP in the United States that still offers dial-up Internet access. Outsourced to whom, you might access? It's a good question. None of the news articles made any mention of this company, and it's not a company that most consumers have ever heard of, even if they use dial-up Internet. But you might get a clue if you dial-in to one of the working access numbers with a modem using your terminal instead of establishing a PPP Internet connection directly. The login prompt you get is indicative:
GlobalPOPs UQKT2 Login:
Who is GlobalPOPs?
Billing itself as "the common sense carrier", GlobalPOPs is essentially a wholesale dialup provider. Dial-up is their main business. They don't serve consumers directly; rather, their customers are ISPs that want to provide dial-up access to their customers. GlobalPOPs maintains all the infrastructure and access numbers for dial-up access in the entire country, so ISPs don't need to worry about procuring local access numbers in every geography they want to serve (even if it's just one). Nor do they need to maintain the equipment and lines to provide the access. This is what everybody misses. AOL has not operated its own dial-up network in ages. Nor has virtually anybody else. Doing so in today's broadband age would be cost-prohibitive, because there isn't room for a bunch of ISPs operating at scale to recoup such large, fixed costs. Every single ISP offering dial-up in the U.S., more or less, is merely reselling access to GlobalPOPs' nationwide dial-up network. And it's no wonder — the expenses of providing this kind of connectivity virtually require a single provider operating at scale. I suspect there may be a few smaller ISPs here and there offering truly regional dial-up access to a handful of customers, but these kinds of outfits are difficult to find. And for nationwide access, GlobalPOPs is the only game in town.
If you've never heard of GlobalPOPs until now, you're not alone, given that it's a company consumers aren't supposed to interact with directly. They're also a fairly low-profile company. Their website, GlobalPOPs.com, is somewhat informative, giving potential ISP customers an idea of the business they operate and how to get in touch. But there's scant information aside from that. Interestingly, their corporate headquarters is located at 2400 Ansys Drive Suite 102 in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. However, some sleuthing online also digs up the address 8 Penn Center West Suite 101 in nearby Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There has been a bit of mystery surrounding this, considering that ABG Capital also has an address at 8 Penn Center #101. That begs the question if there might be any connections between GlobalPOPs and Sangoma. Did GlobalPOPs get bought by Sangoma or something? On authority from someone who used to work there, it seems that VoIP Innovations and GlobalPOPs have no actual connection between the two, but were owned by the same investment group but were sold separately (VoiP Innovations to Sangoma in 2019), which might explain the commonalities in address at one point in time. (Also, much thanks to a couple of the folks on the PhreakNet mailing list for looking into this; I did not do all the above research myself).
In any case, GlobalPOPs is located in Pennsylvania, and there is good reason to believe that's where their infrastructure is concentrated. It would be logical to assume that all of their trunking is IP-based these days, although according to Paul, one of GlobalPOPs' few employees, and with whom I spoke previously on this subject, all their trunking is still TDM. It's a bit unclear if that is actually the case. If you do LNP (Local Number Portability) lookups on their access numbers, most of them are owned by Bandwidth, an IP-based wholescale CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier). Some are owned by other CLECs. That alone doesn't mean it couldn't actually still be TDM though in the backend. And indeed, I've never gotten more stable dial-up connections than those through GlobalPOPs. A number of hobbyists have set up various homebrew ISPs, using anywhere from a bunch of analog modems in a closet to carrier grade 56k-capable access banks. My experience with all of these has been that their setups are unreliable, in large part because they've relied on VoIP over regular Internet connections for trunking to the PSTN. GlobalPOPs, whether using VoIP or TDM, has reliable trunking. On my "POTS over fiber" line, I can dial in and the connection will stay up until the cows come home. Sure, every now and then, there is a random drop, but that tends to be the exception, not the norm. It's night and day when comparing GlobalPOPs to any of the homebrew ISP setups that retrocomputing enthusiasts have tried to replicate. And while I don't mean to demean such endeavors, the reality is that these are not competitive with "real" dial-up access because their reliance on VoIP over consumer-grade Internet connectivity makes them inherently unreliable.
For what it's worth, it should still be possible to get 56k from GlobalPOPs, but in practice, you may never realize that. I myself have never gotten a connection speed higher than 36k on my "POTS over fiber" line, to GlobalPOPs or anything else, for that matter, and while 36k has been possible occasionally, it's usually 33.6 or 31.2. I suspect in large part this may have to do with something with my ONT (optical network terminal) interfering with the V.90/V.92 handshake, since the resulting connection is reliable[1], it's just 56k negotiation that never seems to work. In contrast, one of my peers on AT&T copper POTS has had no trouble getting near 56k speeds. Then again, on the other hand, I have another friend on copper who has never gotten more than 33.6k. There's likely a large amount of variance due to the quality of the copper, noise on the line, etc. For fiber lines, there are likely other issues in play here. More research on my part is still needed in this area, and when I have more conclusive evidence about what it is exactly that's hampering higher-speed dial-up connections, I may post a followup post.
[1] This disproves the longstanding myth that "modems/dial-up don't work over VoIP", since my "POTS over fiber" is technically VoIP using SIP to a packet switch. It's the quality of the connection that matters. TDM is inherently perfect; VoIP tends to be highly variable, but in controlled environments, it should be good enough. I suspect the problem preventing me from getting 56k is not the VoIP in the middle but an active device in the network, like an ONT, for instance.
Start your own ISP for just $200
Perhaps the ultimate irony of dial-up today is that, even while typically accesed via local access numbers, because ISPs no longer have any physical relationship with the dial-up access they sell, a consumer can obtain dial-up access from virtually any ISP in the country, regardless of where he or she lives. GlobalPOPs has even coined a term for this, the Virtual ISP. Indeed, for a time last year, I was accessing GlobalPOPs' dial-up network through Finest Planet, the ISP used by a friend of mine. Unfortunately, at some point his account lapsed, at which point Finest Planet decided to stop offering dial-up access (which is why you can only find evidence of their dial-up offering in the Wayback Archive now). I somewhat suspect that his account may have been their last dial-up account, and he may not actually have been making money on that.
That's not to say that nobody is, though. It's actually easier than ever to become an ISP — a dial-up ISP, that is. You, too, can become an ISP for as little as $200 a month, which will get you a 5-port seat through GlobalPOPs, good for 5 concurrent dial-up sessions. That's $40 per session, but keep in mind that dial-up subscriptions tend to be heavily oversold, meaning not everyone can dial in at the same time (just like the telephone network itself). At an oversubscription ratio of 4:1, you could offer dial-up access to 20 customers for $10 each per month. (And to be competitive with other ISPs offering dial-up, you probably wouldn't want to charge much more than $10 per month).
That said, the majority of ISPs offering dial-up today are not really dial-up ISPs, that is to say, dial-up is not their core business and probably hasn't been in some time. Dial-up is GlobalPOPs's core business, because they can make it work for them. Most ISPs offering dial-up have been offering it for some time, and have retained the offering probably not because it's the most lucrative one, but it hasn't yet become a drag on their business. Most of these ISPs typically offer some kind of broadband services as well (often DSL), especially in the local area where they're headquartered. I suspect many will continue offering dial-up, i.e. reselling access to GlobalPOPs, as long as they aren't losing money by doing it. And as the math shows, you only need a handful of customers to turn a profit (or at least avoid taking a loss).
ISP Recommendations
In the meantime, since I had to hunt around for a new dial-up ISP, I've since switched to VANet, which is a brand of CTI Networks, also headquartered, strangely enough, in Pennsylvania. CTI operates several branded ISPs, such as VA.Net, DC.Net, PA.net, etc. Bizarrely, VA.Net's dial-up offerings are cheaper than all the other ones — VA.Net sells 300 hr/month of dialup for $119.40 per year, but all the others charge $150 a month for the same exact thing. I don't really know why this is. I will say that when I first signed up, I was initially charged the higher rate, but when I asked for clarification, they corrected my bill to the lower rate, admitting that VA.Net should have the lower rate. This is a bit puzzling, giving that you don't need to live in Virginia to use VA.Net — remember, all these branded ISPs operated by CTI are literally just resold GlobalPOPs, using the same exact nationwide dialin numbers, so it doesn't matter which one you sign up through.
If you're looking for a dial-up ISP, I recommend using VA.Net[2], which should be cheaper than the others and available locally, assuming GlobalPOPs has dial-up access numbers in your area — which they do in the majority of the country. An exception to this might be areas without any CLECs, such as Whidbey Island. In these areas, the only local phone numbers are operated by the ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier), and logically enough, GlobalPOPs doesn't obtain numbers from ILECs, probably due to the expense and complexity (given they would need to have some kind of local presence there).
[2] I'm no affiliation of theirs, just a happy customer of a small company with good customer service, which is pretty refreshing in this day and age.
But it's slow! And what about satellite!?
While the heyday of dial-up is long gone, dial-up retains a niche in serving customers that need a low-cost Internet option or that simply don't have alternative options. As providers like AT&T have sought to eliminate DSL (and even entire copper networks), dial-up can remain a backstop for connectivity. This is especially true in places that may only have a telephone line and no other connectivity. While satellite may be technically feasible in some of these locations (assuming the area isn't heavily forested), it's also expensive, and many prefer to avoid satellite networks for environmental or ethical reasons. Starlink, which was initially better received, has come under a lot of fire recently for price gouging as much as it can get away with. SpaceX (who owns Starlink) has also emerged at the forefront of efforts to kill federal funding for high-cost and rural telephone and Internet service. Its ties to Musk, a highly controversial figure who thinks nothing of exploiting the average American while pocketing literal trillions, doesn't help matters. Starlink's ethos is to decimate its competitors and make those in rural and higher-cost areas dependent on its inferior and high-cost service. And if you think SpaceX is unique, the other players in the oligopoly of low-earth orbit technologies are not much better.
I would much rather support a small mom-and-pop ISP (or even a regional provider, like CTI Networks) and GlobalPOPs's access network, which is, in effect, the Internet provider of last resort in America. While dial-up remains highly practical and economical for auxiliary connectivity, I've also spent some time working on methods for making it more viable as a primary option again as well, for those who don't need (or want to) remain tethered to increasingly exploitative broadband subscriptions. Email, Usenet, IRC, SSH, and virtually all Internet applications remain quite friendly to dial-up era speeds. The elephant exception to this is so-called "modern" web applications served over HTTP, by far the most bandwidth-consumptive interactive Internet technology most consumers use. But as the web becomes increasingly fragile and broken, initially due to JavaScript, and now greatly worsened by Generative AI, the utility of the world wide web is quickly diminishing. There may well come a day when the limitations of dial-up are once again in harmony with the experience consumers actually want, rather than the ones they get today.
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