I'd say there were both advantages and drawbacks to the BBS scene. The biggest single advantage was that it tended to be local - of necessity, since long-distan

I'd say there were both advantages and drawbacks to the BBS scene. The biggest single advantage was that it tended to be local - of necessity, since long-distance phone calls to reach distant systems could cost a fortune, even at night rates. There were attempts to address this. Networked forums became available, and there was PC Pursuit, an effort by Telenet to sell off-peak capacity on their X.25 network to people wanting to call faraway BBSes. A user could dial in to a local access number, then use their network to dial out to a remote system, provided their network could dial it from a nearby modem pool.