The similarity between mobile internet (CSD) and dial-up wasn't really obvious from the users' perspective because they weren't explicitly making a call to access the internet. The session was established transparently when data had to be transferred, and the time this took was charged as minutes.

Operators always dreamed of a world built on circuit-switched networks that they fully control instead of packet-switched IP networks where anyone can take part and operators are just a carrier. So the big operators started the mobile internet era with the telephony model.