AOL's dial-up subscription business was responsible for making it one of the most successful global internet companies of the 1990s. And yet, 20 years later — after joining Time Warner for eight years, buying several prominent websites, and undergoing countless other transitions as a digital media company — AOL's dial-up service endures: In its fiscal fourth quarter of 2014, AOL still had more than 2.2 million subscribers.
To be clear, most subscribers get more than just internet service — some of its subscribers also pay for support and other services. AOL offers several plans, and its average revenue per user actually increased in the fourth quarter to $21.18, up from $20.01.
Based on company data charted for us by BI Intelligence, AOL's 2.2 million subscribers generated 24% of the company's total revenue last year ($606.5 million of the $2.53 billion million total)*, and the number of people leaving the service each month has been in decline, which is pretty impressive considering the subscriber base isn't that large these days. The 2.2 million dial-up subscribers are just a fraction of the ~27 million users AOL had in its heyday, but those dial-up subscribers are still providing a lot of the company's revenue.
*(Correction: This article originally misstated AOL's annual revenue and the percentage due to subscriptions. We regret the error.)
