retrocomputing

You would’ve had to pay for the call itself, but probably only if you had to make a long-distance call. I think by that time local numbers were pretty universally unlimited minutes, but long distance was 25¢/minute or more. I was too young to be buying phone service myself, then, but remember TV ads promoting 25¢ or 10¢ or something like that as a good deal. Around 2003 when I was first living on my own I used to buy prepaid calling cards to call home and those got me as low as 3¢/minute, and that was a bargain.