Same thing in Ireland, except that we paid for the calls. So we paid 2c per minute, of which the ISP maybe 1c got from the telco in termination fees, so there was a lot of "free" internet access at the time.
Same in Brazil, where free ISPs owned by small telcos in the then-recently deregulated market were incredibly important in making the Internet popular during the 90's. The free ISPs became so good that they started competing with for-pay ISP at every level, including speed.
Of course broadband made the whole thing obsolete.
