WTF is this? I was at university and I assure you we were connected to the internet. I got a login and an email address from the physics department in `91 because I was working on a project on their network. I used Elm for email, which had been out since the 80s. I was happy to upgrade to Pine (Pine is not elm) in 1992 and actually kept using Pine until like 1999. By `92 pretty much everyone else at my university was using the internet. I could dial up from home via modem, and check my email. NCSA Mosaic came out in `93.

>ure, but I was a network engineer at the time and your TCP/IP was very, very niche.. you know very well that there was no "Internet" in 1990

There was no consumer Internet in 1990.

However, TCP/IP was in use across a broad range of academic institutions and corporations, and it was possible for pretty much anyone to buy access to TCP/IP-based inter-networks.

Which, if you were a network engineer (and not for Novell or DEC) at the time, you would know.