In the course of the takeover of AOL by the financial investor Apollo, customer details have also become known. Several thousand people are said to still use the dial-up modem service.

On Monday it became known that Verizon had sold the Internet veterans AOL and Yahoo to the private equity firm Apollo Global Management – at a fraction of their former value. Verizon earned five billion US dollars – and thus at least half of the previous purchase price. At the end of the 1990s, the two companies were once worth around $ 325 billion. There is not much left of the former glory, even if some details about the current AOL customer structure are quite surprising.

As part of the takeover of AOL by Apollo, it became known that the former Internet pioneer still has 1.5 million paying customers. For comparison: In 2002 AOL had around 34 million customers worldwide. The 1.5 million subscribers are still paying between $ 9.99 and $ 14.99 per month. Accordingly, AOL earns millions with the old subscriptions – according to conservative estimates it should be around 180 million dollars a year. However, it is now about premium services such as technical support or protection against identity theft.

But: A few thousand AOL customers should still use a modem dial into the Internet, as CNBC reports, citing a company insider. That might sound like a lot at first. Compared to 2015, when 2.1 million customers still used AOL’s dial-up modem service, the number is now negligible. In 2013, even two percent of US households are said to have dialed into the Internet via modem.

While AOL only has a fraction of its former number of customers, Yahoo is enjoying continued popularity. The Google of the 1990s still has 150 million daily active users. Almost 900 million users stop by Yahoo at least once a month. What Apollo plans to do with AOL and Yahoo as well as the other business units under the Verizon Media umbrella is unclear. According to observers, Apollo should first invest in the expansion. In the long run, individual parts of the package could then be sold, according to CNBC.

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