That was great. Never knew exactly where the 56k number came from.

When 56k modems first came out I was able to get full speed, and it was a great upgrade. Then we moved and I could never pass 28.8 or so.

Turns out in their infinite wisdom in the new development we moved to the phone company divided things up even more so they could get two lines out of what should have been one. 28 + 28 = 56.

I don’t know if they were using some sort of compression or something so that it wasn’t audible on voice calls but it meant a modem was capped forever.

The wait for cable internet was interminable (it came before DSL).