It's near-instant now not usually because of more incessant polling, but because it simply keeps the connection open (can last many hours without sending a single byte, depending also on the platform) and writes data onto it as needed (IMAP IDLE). This has gotten more efficient if anything

And because how expensive they were in Portugal, I never done it, it was always on manual.

Right!

The "send and receive" button is seared into my brain

I was in Spain at the time, and at first you had to connect to the Internet through a phone number in France.

Did you guys have something like that?

In the early days, it was a long distance call to either Lisbon or Porto, I only got a modem, when regional numbers were available to the district capitals.

However on BBS days was much worse, it was mostly long distace calls to someone around the country, and they usually only had a couple of connections available like five or so.

Ah another thing is that they adopted the same model as mobile phones, so at least we could pre-pay the calls, and went we run out of cash there was it, no surprise bills, even if frustated.