> The standard fee is about $40 a month -- about the same as TV cable service.
I mean WOW! Americans were able to get internet at 40$ / month in '93? I recall, in 2003, my folks had to pay huge telephone bills even when my internet usage didn't exceed more than 2 hrs a day (dial-up times).
Oh, that $40 is the service cost. Even in '97 I remember paying £20/mo for the ISP, phone bills were then on top of that £20.
Then "freeserve" came out[1] and (gasp!) was free apart from the phone call. This was a major shift. There were downsides (only 1 pop3 email account, no newsgroups, no webspace), but it was free!
Almost all residential POTS lines in the US were flat-rate, so there were no charges here to make a local phone call. Granted, if you had to dial long-distance to connect to the ISP, then you paid toll rates for that.
It was around $15 to $20 for my family using dial-up in the mid 1990s ('94/95) for unlimited use (equivalent to maybe $7 to $10 today). 4kb / sec baby! The phone line was another $20, and you'd dial a local # for the ISP to avoid long distance fees. Never could talk my parents into getting a separate phone line just for the modem.
I mean WOW! Americans were able to get internet at 40$ / month in '93? I recall, in 2003, my folks had to pay huge telephone bills even when my internet usage didn't exceed more than 2 hrs a day (dial-up times).