[1n3nt0r]

One of the impediments to BBS'ing was the extraordinarily high cost of connection. Luckily I go early access to arpanet, uucp, and bitnet as a middle school and high school student in the 80s.

AT&T phone rates were outrageously high in the 80s and early 90s. In todays money, calling a non-local BBS would cost ~20$ / hr. Personally I could not afford and my parents would have been aghast.

I think some got involved in the phreaking and hacking scene because of the usurious rates.

[geoelectric]

Atlanta had a phenomenal BBS scene in the 80s, in part because the 404 area code was flat rate for all local calls and covered a large (at least 25 miles, probably more) radius around Atlanta proper.

When I moved to the SF Bay Area in 1991 I couldn’t figure out why the BBS scene in tech mecca sucked so badly. Then I got my first phone bill and discovered out here local calls were metered for anything over a few miles away…

[junto]

Additional notes on your last sentence: https://pub.microbin.eu/upload/otter-zebra-bee