https://money.cnn.com/1996/11/01/technology/aol/

In a letter sent to the service's members Oct. 28, AOL Chairman Steve Case touted a new pricing plan that offers unlimited access to the service's proprietary content as well as to the Internet for $19.95 a month.

[Snip]

Until the new unlimited plan was unveiled, all users paid $9.95 a month for 5 hours of usage and $2.95 for each additional hour.

This is what I remembered. My dad always told me to watch the Internet usage, because it cost money for each hour. These were 5-hours / month plans back then. That being said, 1996 is a year before Diablo, meaning the "unlimited" plans came in soon afterwards. But "unlimited" didn't really work out in our favor because my mom and grandma who lived with us always wanted to use the phone.

And we were the only kids of the neighborhood who had internet. People came over to our house to surf the net.