When I used dial-up, local calls were free.
Comment on came across some family heirlooms today, hahaha!
user224@lemmy.sdf.org 2 days ago
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but did you still pay for the call itself, or was this fully free?
cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 2 days ago
Zachariah@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Not free. Included in your monthly phone line subscription.
dan@upvote.au 2 days ago
Depends on region. In Australia, local calls (within the same state) were a flat $0.20 or $0.25, while interstate and mobile calls were billed by the minute.
I’ve heard that some Americans were billed for incoming calls too?? Crazy.
Zachariah@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Yeah, definitely depends on year and location. But phone calls are never free. Maybe unlimited, but you still face a monthly bill at the very least.
Psythik@lemmy.world 2 days ago
AOL used a combination of local and 1-800 numbers. The only additional fee you had to pay was the AOL subscription.
bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
I’m pretty sure you still had to pay your phone provider who may have charged $0.10/call unless AOL was using 1-800 numbers to dial to?
jqubed@lemmy.world 2 days ago
You would’ve had to pay for the call itself, but probably only if you had to make a long-distance call. I think by that time local numbers were pretty universally unlimited minutes, but long distance was 25¢/minute or more. I was too young to be buying phone service myself, then, but remember TV ads promoting 25¢ or 10¢ or something like that as a good deal. Around 2003 when I was first living on my own I used to buy prepaid calling cards to call home and those got me as low as 3¢/minute, and that was a bargain.
WhiteOakBayou@lemmy.world 2 days ago
10 10 3 2 1. Bobwehadababyitsaboy. I forgot about those ads. They were super bowl ad popular in my memory.
Nay@feddit.nl 2 days ago
It was free, but iirc, you had to sign up for a monthly subscription, and the 700 hours was just your first month free.
WhiteOakBayou@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It depends on where you live. I lived in a rural area so the nearest local isp was far enough away that it cost. The cds and floppies that constantly came in the mail didn’t charge though. There were a bunch of those free services and ad supported isps. I had dial up for a long time and watched the business model go from portal style sandbox like AOL to literal "all internet is free if you keep this ad open. " towards the end before I left for college.
jawa22@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
You just gave me flashbacks of NetZero nightmares.
WhiteOakBayou@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I absolutely had them in mind. They were one of the better ones. Dial up is nostalgia trip was not on today’s bingo card but I’m gladdened by the reminder.