He may have been being more literal than you think. I can name 3 people that were paying for an AOL subscription because they thought they needed to keep it to keep using their AOL e-mail addresses. They all had broadband from their cable companies, they weren't dialing up.
They may have needed it at one point. At the time I quit AOL, there was no way to keep the email address, and they did not provide IMAP access or forwarding. Seriously. They (very badly) practiced the lock-in attitude. I just visited mail.aol.com and realized that things have changed a lot.
