Prodigy spoke ppp, was reasonably priced, and still had news access in 99/00 and a good feed at that. At some point they underwent a series of mergers/sell-ofs/rebrands until Yahoo owned them. I think their nntp servers still worked when I switched to cable internet in around 03.

Prodigy offering $400 off a $399 computer at Best Buy if you signed up for a 3 year service agreement was why I had my first modern computer.