A similar thing happened in New Zealand (and likely elsewhere) in the late 90's, before broadband became prevalent. There were a number of ISP's who provided free dial-up internet, because they made money from termination fees when the majority of people called from a large telco to their smaller one. Eventually the large telco reached a commercial agreement and the service was scrapped, but it was good while it lasted.
Same thing in Ireland, except that we paid for the calls. So we paid 2c per minute, of which the ISP maybe 1c got from the telco in termination fees, so there was a lot of "free" internet access at the time.
Same in Brazil, where free ISPs owned by small telcos in the then-recently deregulated market were incredibly important in making the Internet popular during the 90's. The free ISPs became so good that they started competing with for-pay ISP at every level, including speed.
Of course broadband made the whole thing obsolete.
