I read like 10 years ago that a small but still double digit percentage of their income still came from dial-up subscribers many of whom didn’t still use the service. It was speculated at the time that many of these people simply didn’t realize they were still paying for it. I’m guessing they all finally died or credit card numbers changed enough that it wasn’t free money for them anymore.

Every rural house gets a phone line, just like they all get roads and mail

It's not profitable, but that didn't matter because it was a utility

With Broadband, it's a "luxury" so to get it out to a clump of rural users, they all need to pay for it, or wait and hope someone else pays to get it closer.

Funny thing is dialup has been non viable for ~15 years if not more where I live. When you can get 100 mbit fibre for like $5 a month and it costs a whopping $12.5 dollars a month for a 1000 mbit fibre line, it makes no economic sense to offer dialup.

That’s like Netflix discontinuing their dvd service only a few years ago

Per your own link: they started as game delivery service called Control Video Corp and later became an AppleLink service called Quantum Link. They became AOL in 89 when they separated from Apple and offered internet modem pools starting in 91.