Surprisingly, the telco (at the time called #GTE ) used the same dial-up number, but connections usually completed. And instead of 30-something K, the telco usually got about 50k (out the advertised 56k ... this was the age of K56flex versus X2; I had the K56 version).
I eventually discovered the Yahoo chat rooms. They were almost as good.
LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} (lnxw48a1@nu.federati.net)'s status on Monday, 03-Feb-2020 17:19:13 UTC
LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864}#Yahoo (now combined with #AOL to form #Oath, a subsidiary of #Verizon) proposes to buy $117.5 million dollars worth of credit monitoring as compensation for people whose information was leaked between 2012 and 2016. . Credit monitoring is almost useless (because alerts happen after the fact; there are more effective services that basically turn off all credit inquiries, preventing the use of stolen info), and it also lasts for a limited time. If a badguy has your basic info and secret question info (third grade teacher's name, first pet's name, model of first car, mother's maiden name, etc) they can wait a couple of years and _then_ open accounts in your name.
A plea to help keep the older Netscape / Mosaic web browsers from ceasing to function:
"Dear Lazyweb, tell me who inside of Oath / Verizon has the ability to edit the DNS records of the "mcom.com" domain. Or, preferably, just transfer the domain to me."