At this week's meeting of the North Dakota Public Service Commission, Randy Christmann began the meeting playing sound.
It was the sound of dial-up modem for connecting to the Internet.
Christmann said some people will remember that sound, of a dial-up modem, for computers to access the Internet. He said it was estimated that, as recently in 2023, 163-thousand households were still using dial-up modems.
"I think those were largely in rural areas that didn't have broadband," Christmann said.
Christmann also said he brought this up for two reasons.
"One is, next Tuesday is the end of AOL on-line," Christmann said. "It will not exist anymore. It's gone."
Christmann said he doesn't know what that last fraction of a percent of households is exactly going to do. But he said this shouldn’t be a problem in North Dakota.
"Our telecommunications companies have done such an excellent job, that even though problems that are often associated with service in rural areas, North Dakota has been an exception to that for all these years," Christmann said.
