Large dial-up ISPs had huge lists of numbers you could use to dial in with so that you could pick the one which was local to you. I'm not sure how this worked o

Large dial-up ISPs had huge lists of numbers you could use to dial in with so that you could pick the one which was local to you. I'm not sure how this worked on the provider side, but customers pretty much never payed by-the-minute fees to dial into their ISP.