This is where I feel really old, and geeky.

Back when I 1st encountered the 'internet' it was all private servers & BBS sites that you dialled directly into. All that on a 9kbps modem. XD

Shortly after that the UK got real internet... K, so maybe not real - it was AOL & Compuserve. Both required an international call to the US, and it was sloooooow.

When we eventually got dedicated UK service providers they pretty much sucked. The data rates were awful & they locked out many features like FTP & 99% of all ports.

When I hit college British Telecom released a service called Wireplay - it let you play IPX games online, had a cool community & generally pwned. Granted you couldn't surf the web via the service, but who cared?

I got a sponsorship off BT for playing Duke Nukem 3D & they paid for all my phonebills so long as I played. The service died when they sold it to another ISP.