JanJ Followed a couple months later when we did same with 9600 baud modem that I borrowed from work to try at home.
Back in the day dialup modems resulted in a lot of subscriber grief once they hit 33, then went to 56, at Bell South the majority of our subs where served out of Remote Terminals (RT) many of which where Subscriber Loop Carrier 96, the Digital to Analog (DA) line cards in those SLC96s could not convert the D/A with the proper line card installed any faster than 33, so if a sub went out and purchased a expensive 56 only to have it handshake up to 33 and go no faster, they got upset causing a lot of unnecessary dispatch’s and truck rolls.
Sadly in the beginning POTS techs didn’t understand what was happening and did tons of pair changes trying to solve the problem to no avail.
Then came SLC5 which had line cards that could provide under the correct circumstances, that being the system was Integrated and the proper line card was installed.
Integrated did not utilize a Central Office Terminal (COT), it was digital out of the switch to the D/A in the RT line card.
Universal utilized a COT so the path was analog from the switch to the COT where it went A/D then to the RT where it went D/A and that dual conversion knocked the speeds down anywhere from 33 to maybe a non-standard 36 regardless of the modem the sub had.
And as before POTS techs didn’t understand what was happening and did tons of pair changes trying to solve the problem to no avail.
Then came another problem we where running out of copper because a lot of out subs where installing second POTS lines so their modem would not tie up their phone all day and night.
The solution was the Digitally Added Main Line (DAML) and they really effed things up, the system was simple based on ISDN with 2 X 56 Bearer channels and it should of solved that pesky copper shortage, well not so fast it added yet another D/A conversion which resulted in neither of the subs POTS line supporting 96 and sometimes depending on the angle of the Sun and the Moon divided by the quality of the copper pair it was connected to, it wouldn’t support 33, dropping 56 modems down to something like 14.4.
They became known as Dam-l’s or DAML’s in distress and once again POTS techs not understanding what was happening did tons of pair changes trying to solve the problem to no avail.
Lucky for SS techs like I and many others that where assigned Red Phones (PSC complaints) ADSL came along and while it introduced a lot of new problems it solved way more than it caused, with ADSL a sub at a max of 18Kf of sort of clean unloaded copper could get a blazing 1.5 down / 256 up.
Oh did I mention clean copper, the F2 (aerial) OSP where I lived was truly effed, as such with ADSL I had turtle like speeds maybe 560 down 256 up with errors out the wazoo, I had a total of 6 truck rolls before I was told by another employee there is no way they can make it any better.
So I caused what I used to solving, I filed a complaint with the PSC creating a Red Phone, oh did I catch heck for that, but the company got off their butts and had a cable rehab crew lash up a new 50 pair aerial cable from the crossbox to the end of the street where I lived and no further, that solved the crap copper problem for me, but didn’t do crap for folks west of me where the old garbage copper was all they still had.