4 ms·
CIX supplied Ameol (a most excellent offline reader) which could connect quickly and disconnect. In the UK we didn’t have the luxury of the US’s free local call
by robin_reala 8y ago
CIX supplied Ameol (a most excellent offline reader) which could connect quickly and disconnect. In the UK we didn’t have the luxury of the US’s free local calls, so that was an added expense on top of that.
- ghaff 8y ago>In the UK we didn’t have the luxury of the US’s free local calls Although free local calls could be quite limited in area. Intrastate long distance (which could be as little as 15 or 20 miles away) could actually be more expensive than interstate long distance. I don't remember the details but I used a private BBS service in the nearest major city in the 80s. I had some sort of phone plan that optimized for this but I still used offline tools to minimize my online time. (i.e. Login, suck down content, logoff, read and reply offline) I used similar tools for Compuserve. As you say, it was extraordinarily expensive by today's standards. People complain about the pricing of a lot of things but telecoms and pretty much everything related to computing is incredibly cheap.