In a message dated 96-07-29 19:16:30 EDT, you write:

Any sort of dialup service is pretty much going to limit you to store-and-forward items. Any full-time links attempting to mesh "a few thousand" users is going to quickly exceed my paltry $400K.

I agree... but I am also thinking that not one person is picking up the tab. Undoubtedly some systems are going to go up and down also... so - at the beginning - it could be like fidonet. But hopefully it would be more than a bunch of machines calling each other up an bursting information, some may backbone for a while.