AOL will shut down its dial-up service, AOL Dialer, and AOL Shield Browser on Sept. 30, ending an era when the modem handshake signaled the arrival of the internet. Dial-up’s 56 kbps limit has been replaced by gigabit fiber, roughly 18,000 times faster in 34 years. More than speed has changed. Each leap in network performance has created entirely new markets and experiences, following an exponential technology curve with far-reaching business implications.
The Velocity of Data is Increasing and Will Always Increase
Dial-up maxed out at 56 kilobits per second. Today’s 1-gigabit fiber service – a conservative baseline in many markets – represents roughly 18,000 times faster performance in 34 years. But raw speed misses the point. We didn’t just get a faster internet, we got a different internet that enabled entirely new categories of human experiences. Every time network performance improved, markets invented applications that were previously impossible. The progression from dial-up to today follows a classic exponential technology curve, and this has significant business implications.
A Predictable Path
The technical path from screech to symmetry follows predictable patterns. Copper got pushed to its physical limits. Cable operators learned to squeeze gigabits from coaxial networks built for television. Fiber rewrote the baseline entirely, with new standards delivering 25 gigabits over the same glass that once carried megabits. Wireless caught up not just on speed but on reliability (probably even more important than raw speed for real applications).
Meanwhile, satellite internet transformed from a punchline into a credible broadband option through low-earth orbit constellations. Starlink now delivers 100+ megabit speeds with latency in the mid-20 milliseconds – fast enough for video calls from moving vehicles. You can get 500 Mbps service in most major metros, with many markets offering multi-gigabit tiers.
Most importantly, the increases in speed didn’t just give us faster internet, they enabled the creation of completely new products and services: Streaming video at scale. Cloud-first software development. Real-time collaboration across continents. Live commerce and interactive entertainment. Remote production workflows. In practice, high-speed internet has enabled the always-online world we live in today.
The AI inflection point
The current half-a-trillion dollar (and counting) hyperscale data center buildouts we’re seeing now represent the next velocity threshold. These investments will only generate returns if AI inference can reach customers over fat, reliable pipes with minimal latency. Your future AI assistant won’t feel intelligent if it takes three seconds to respond to voice commands.
For us to finally enjoy augmented reality (AR), we’re going to need motion-to-photon response times under 20 milliseconds. That’s not a nice-to-have spec, it’s table stakes for the category. We can expect latency for comfortable AR experiences to be measured in single-digit milliseconds at the edge.
Then, there’s the emerging world of AI agents. These systems will coordinate across multiple services, process real-time data streams, and respond to environmental changes instantly. An agent that takes 10 seconds to react to your calendar change or traffic pattern isn’t useful – it’s annoying.
Think About This
We need to design for tomorrow’s velocity, not today’s average. Our customers won’t thank us for building applications that “work fine on gigabit.” They’ll abandon us when those applications feel slow compared to competitors who assumed 10-gigabit symmetrical service.
Next, upstream bandwidth and consistent low latency will matter as much as headline download speeds. The shift to cloud-rendered experiences, real-time collaboration, and always-on AI means our users are producing as much data as they consume. Jitter and packet loss will decide whether professional workflows feel instant or unusable.
Lastly, network architecture will become an even more competitive race. The companies winning in AI won’t just rent more GPUs, they will position compute at the network edge, minimizing data round-trips, and designing for congestion scenarios. If your product strategy depends on AI responsiveness, network topology matters as much as your server specifications.
What’s Next?
The roadmap is surprisingly predictable. Expect 10-gigabit residential service to become commonplace as fiber buildouts accelerate and cable operators deploy new standards. In-home wireless will prioritize reliability over raw speed – crucial for AR devices and local AI systems. Mobile networks will push compute to the edge to support real-time applications.
My dear friend, Marty Cooper (who placed the first public call from a handheld portable cell phone in 1973) formulated the Law of Spectral Efficiency (aka Cooper’s Law) to help us calculate the increase in capacity. It states, “The maximum number of voice conversations or equivalent data transactions that can be conducted in all the useful radio spectrum over a given area doubles every 30 months.”
The larger pattern holds: infrastructure providers who can deliver deterministic, low-latency performance will enable the next generation of applications. Those applications will quickly feel essential rather than innovative. And the cycle begins again.
When AOL’s dial-up service finally goes silent we’ll close the chapter on 1990’s internet access. But we’ll also be marking the distance traveled on an exponential curve that shows no signs of flattening. In truth, the sound of that last modem handshake will be the starting gun for whatever comes next.
Author’s note: This is not a sponsored post. I am the author of this article and it expresses my own opinions. I am not, nor is my company, receiving compensation for it. This work was created with the assistance of various generative AI models.
Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with technology, media and marketing. Named LinkedIn’s “Top Voice in Technology,” he covers tech and business for Good Day New York, is a regular commentator on CNN and writes a popular daily business blog. He's a bestselling author, and the creator of the popular, free online course, Generative AI for Execs. Follow @shellypalmer or visit shellypalmer.com.
