It really depended on the era and what area you were in. After the breakup of the Bell System, flat-rate areas (Zone 1 calling) spread across the RBOCs, but ultimately that still meant that metropolitan areas tended to benefit more than rural areas. The SF Bay Area was a prime example of this where the East Bay arguably had one of the best LATAs around that could reach dozens of bulletin boards.

Hopefully more Fidonet archives turn up in the coming years so people can understand what things were like back then. Ditto Compuserve... which, if I understand correctly, a large collection of documents relating thereto was acquired by the Internet Archive and awaits processing.

It was not in the period I'm talking about. Your local calling area--maybe some adjacent exchanges/towns--was free but for me to call Boston from about an hour west was decidedly not free in the late 80s. Mileage may have varied of course.

And when cellular came in, I deliberately picked an area code based on the people I was most likely to call.