Back in the day a buddy and I ran the only BBS in Cape Girardeau MO.
We also ran the town’s only dial-a-joke :-)
Everyone called my BBS. I had online textual games and a popular chat-with-sysop feature.
I got some of those really cheap phone lines installed that have free incoming calls but by the minute outgoing...were 5 dollars a month each.
I wonder if you could that again? How much would they cost now?
I checked out a site about BBS boards and some of them had 200+ nodes. I don’t know if that’s internet or phone nodes though.