Dial-up Internet Wasn't Free

Whilst reviewing the paper published on the Australian Policy Online site by Robert and Charles Kenny I came across this:

dial-up ... wasn’t expensive – a 56Kbps modem cost $100 in 1997, in dial-up’s heyday. The per-line share of the ISP’s modem bank was a further $90. For this sub-$200 upgrade, society got email ... e-commerce ... User-Generated Content ... online news ... and social networking

(p. 16)

I would condense their further argument to "we didn't spend anything on the first Internet so why should we on the next one?"

Welcome to WiredCounty

Last week I attended a tweetup in London bringing together people interested in fiber-to-the-home as a community enterprise.  There's lots of background reading to catch up on as I've been out of the community-networking loop for a while - back in the early days of broadband roll-out I was one of those disenfranchised rural dwellers who built their own village wireless access network to escape dial-up pain.