[ghaff]

It was not in the period I'm talking about. Your local calling area--maybe some adjacent exchanges/towns--was free but for me to call Boston from about an hour west was decidedly not free in the late 80s. Mileage may have varied of course.

And when cellular came in, I deliberately picked an area code based on the people I was most likely to call.

[jghn]

Yep, exactly. I think he boundaries weren't fuzzy, as in it wasn't "the towns adjacent to you" but there were lines. I'm pretty sure it cost money to call my friends who lived one town over for instance, but I know it was the case for friends who lived 2-3 towns over.

[kragen]

right, late 80s. where i lived at the time (albuquerque or socorro) the local calling area was a whole city or group of nearby towns, but if you were to drive in any direction for an hour you'd be out in the middle of the wilderness, so it doesn't sound like your situation was actually different

[ghaff]

At the time I was in a reasonably far out suburb and there really weren’t local BBSs of note. Certainly not wilderness but close to an hour out of Boston. May have been a couple of local BBSs but they’d have been one or two line operations.

[kragen]

yeah, almost all were one- or two-line operations in albuquerque