I used to use FidoNet eons ago through our local BBS, before the days of the internet.
Question is, why toggle everything back to use this antiquated system when we have a working internet ? Unless if all all you have is dial up I guess - and free long distance....
TL;DR warning, hehe
Dial-up BBS's are next to non existent anymore, though the option remains to add dial up nodes to an existing telnet (or SSH) BBS. Personally I haven't dialed into a BBS since the mid 90's, but I still use BBS's quite often via telnet/SSH.
In developed worlds, FidoNet (and similar FTN's), and BBS's as a whole are mainly just a nostalgia thing. I know I run my BBS just for nostalgia factor, and the technical challenge of it. It's campy and fun for me, and I get to run the BBS I never had the patience to build back when I was 15, and IMHO the Amiga platform is still the finest machine ever to exist for a BBS host. I run Zeus BBS on a SAM 440ep.
In developing nations and in nations with oppressive governmental regimes, these older methods of networked communications can be a very important tool for the people. HAM radio, while certainly more of a public service still even in this day and age, is still quite effective in the same regard.
In the BBS: The Documentary film, there's mention of doctors in China, their general WWW experience so censored by the Great Firewall that their research in the AIDS field was 5 years in the past, causing them to be less effective in their jobs. They make mention that they use FidoNet for dissemination of new methods of treatment for HIV/AIDS - the government will censor their internet, but not their data telecommunications via BBS's and packet based messaging networks. They find FidoNet/FTN's absolutely essential, though I do expect even in such countries BBS's are falling out of favor to proxied Internet connections to get around governmental firewalls.
BBS's and FidoNet/FTN's also resurfaced some time ago when Egypt was under political pressure and their government essentially shut off the public internet, either being used directly as intended, or as proxies.
Most FidoNet traffic is done via FTP or UseNet to FTN gates these days, taking out the dial-up aspects out of the picture entirely. A dial-up number is no longer required to be a node in most FTN's, etc.
