There were FidoNet systems as early as 1988: http://www.textfiles.com/fidonet-on-the-internet/n1988/nodel...

Look for "Region,49" and you'll see a small number of them, but they were in Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, and Johannesburg.

Whether they could actually dial out to the rest of the world is open to question, but they would have needed to at least be accessible from the outside world for them to even be on FidoNet in the first place.