The love story of Shopgirl and NY152 is coming to an end as AOL is shutting down its dial-up Internet service on September 30.

Popularised by the Nora Ephron-directed film You’ve Got Mail — starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan — in 1998, AOL’s service began in 1991 when home computers were becoming accessible. India has been ahead in this game as it switched off the last dial-up connection in 2021.

The end came in a 100-word notice, befitting an era of short videos and stories. “AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet. The service will no longer be available in AOL plans,” the company said, followed by the steps users can take.

If you are surprised that the service was still operating, consider the US census estimate from 2019: 265,000 people were using it.

AOL’s dial-up tone was, at times, followed by the three words as Meg Ryan’s character Kathleen Kelly said in the film: “You’ve got mail. I hear nothing. Not even a sound on the streets of New York, just the beating of my own heart. I have mail. From you.”

The dial-up connected to the Internet using a conventional telephone line, accompanied by chirping and hissing sounds in the process. AOL, which is owned by Yahoo, was famous for its free trial discs that were found everywhere in the US. From America Online, it became AOL in 2006. Verizon sold AOL and Yahoo to private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $5 billion in 2021.

At its peak, a dial-up connection in the US could manage up to 56 kilobits per second, and it took what seemed an eternity to download a photograph or MP3 file. At the moment, it is possible to experience fibre connectivity with services offering 500 Mbps data speeds.

AOL Internet launched a version of its portal in India in 2007. It included sections dedicated to Bollywood, cricket and international music. Back then, AOL said the Indian market had around 45 million Internet users at the end of 2006, but by 2011, it scaled down its India operations. As of March 2024, India had 954.4 million Internet users, while the US is home to 322.5 million users.

Even when broadband connectivity became popular in US cities, rural communities depended on dial-up connections. For Generation X, late-night AIM chats (AOL Instant Messenger) were as popular as thumbing through social media feeds now.

A fitting farewell will be a line from a message that Kathleen sends to Joe Fox (Tom Hanks): “The odd thing about this form of communication is you’re more likely to talk about nothing than something. But I just want to say that all this nothing has meant more to me than so many… somethings.”

After AOL shuts its dial-up service, the US will still have a handful of offerings in this space, but none with the marketing capabilities of the popular tech brand.