The Tale of the Free-Net, the Cheap Way Dial-Up Users Got Online

Culture
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in the 90s, we used Bluelight.com

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I see in the article that National Capital FreeNet (i.e., Ottawa) is still going.

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I had a freenet account for awhile but it wasn’t local (I think it was in Florida). To get to it, I had to dial through the university computer, connect to another university, and dial out from there to the freenet system. It was quicker/easier than routing things from the internet through the Fidonet/WWIVnet gateways, but still kind of clunky. A bit like a BBS that could do more than a local BBS, but was harder to use. It was pretty much obsolete when dial-up ISPs started becoming common and AOL went from per-minute to per-month pricing.

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I had them as a fallback for a while as well as another similar service

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