Around here, it was common to see the phone lines draped between bushes
on the side of the road. That and instead of trenching, they ran the
phone line through culverts.
bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>
On 8/12/2025 11:22 AM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
Here when GTE lines became Verizon and then Frontier, the techs would
tell customers there was “water in the lines” and “mice in the
boxes”. That happens when your repair for a busted pedestal is to put
an orange trash bag over it.
*From:*AF <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Jan-GAMs
*Sent:* Tuesday, August 12, 2025 1:02 PM
*To:* [email protected]
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] OT: Oh No! No more modem sounds!
After Verizon bought GTE the phone became un-usable and their
technicians couldn't fix-it. We had to move to wireless and cable
because the noise interference on the twisted-pair copper was too
excessive for dial-up.
On 8/12/25 10:13, Bill Prince wrote:
Before we started our broadband company, we had 3 landlines. One
for personal use, one for business use, and one for internet
access. None of the 3 lines were capable of more than 28 Kbps on a
clear sunny day. More often, about 20 Kbps. We had a modem that
was directly connected to our router. The main reason for the slow
speeds was because we are ~~ 75,000 feet (over 14 miles) from the
CO. When you picked up a phone, it took at least a second or two
before you got a dial tone. It was a miracle it worked at all. At
some point after we established our broadband company, the 3rd
line became a backup phone line. There was even a point where none
of the 3 lines actually worked. That became the writing on the
wall; especially when VoIP became a reality.
bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>
On 8/12/2025 8:00 AM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
If it’s from self-reported census data, I’m still skeptical.
Most people today don’t know what a landline is, they think
their cellphone is a landline. They also don’t know what
dialup is. Ask someone with DSL and they may call it dialup
because it goes over the phoneline. They say WiFi when they
mean Internet, and modem when they mean router.
I felt dialup became totally useless for most use cases over
10 years ago when it was no longer possible to do Windows
Update or update antivirus software over a 56 kbps
connection. People would have to take their computer
somewhere else every few months to get updates. And for
anything other than a computer they probably need WiFi which
is technically possible over dialup but nobody buys that
equipment any more (I forget what it was called or who made it).
Anybody using a dialup modem connection today is probably
using a FAX machine or something like a POS credit card terminal.
We got out of dialup in 2009, I might still have some Ascend
remote access servers somewhere if they didn’t go to the
recycler, I think it was something like a MAX4096? Let me
know if you actually want them and I’ll look. Most of them
were on Chicago metro area numbers but we had one in DeKalb
for our wireless customers to use for free in case of an
outage. Nobody used them, even in 2009, they would rather
drive to town and use the WiFi at a coffee shop than use
dialup, it was considered that useless.
People these days will say their Internet is so slow it’s at
“dialup speed” when they’re downloading at 1 Mbps. People
don’t know what 56 kbps feels like. I mean, in today’s terms,
that’s 0.000056 gigabits. Asking Google AI how long it would
take to download a game at that speed, it answered:
“Therefore, it would theoretically take approximately 168 days
(almost half a year) to download Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on
a 56 Kbps dial-up connection”.
*From:*AF <[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Bill Prince
*Sent:* Tuesday, August 12, 2025 9:37 AM
*To:* [email protected]
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] OT: Oh No! No more modem sounds!
The 1/4 million I heard yesterday had to be an estimate. In
today's paper they had this. It's still an estimate, and it is
2 years old.
/Still, a handful of consumers have continued to rely on
internet services connected over telephone lines. In the
U.S., according to Census Bureau data, an estimated
163,401 households were using dial-up alone to get online
in 2023, representing just over 0.13% of all homes with
internet subscriptions nationwide./
bp
<part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>
On 8/11/2025 9:16 PM, Trey Scarborough wrote:
I don't see how they have lasted this long or how there
could be a 250k people that would be able to get an actual
land line to be able to use 56k dialup.
This makes me have so many questions. Like where are all
these PRIs and dailup units to run these. I remember
removing many of the old Lucent max TNTs that AOL used for
dialup in our COs in the mid 2000s. I tried to reconfigure
a couple of them to use as VOIP gateways, but they had a
custom firmware on them that it wouldn't go back to
regular defaults. How are they still running all of these
local numbers? I'm in ATT/VZ/CL main COs on a regular
basis and think I would notice dial up equipment running
in the colo spaces and cant say that I have noticed any. I
have seen a few portmaster PM3s that do not look like they
are functioning anymore. All the ports have alarms and the
companies they are labeled as being have been bankrupt for
years.
For certain the oddity that they are still somewhat
functioning today completely astonishes me.
On 8/11/2025 2:36 PM, Bill Prince wrote:
For those of you who think nostalgically about those
warm modem dial-up tones, AOL is discontinuing its
dial-up service. Music to the ears of all ISPs that
there will now be about a quarter million new internet
customers.
https://pcper.com/2025/08/aol-discontinues-dial-up-wait-what/
--
AF mailing list
[email protected]
http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
