"mm" wrote in message
...

Did dial-up ever cause a shortage of phone lines? I never heard that,
but I am surprised if the phone companies had the capacity to fulfill
maybe a 50 to 300% increase in demand over the course of 10 years,
from soon after dial-up's startup to its peak. . . .
When I first got dialup, there weren't that many ways to use the Net,
I didn't have that as many ways as one might have. So I was only on
an hour or two a day. And even when I got more uses, I tried to stay
on no more than maybe 3 hours to not tie up the phone lines. . . .
Cnversely, is there now a lot of excess capacity on phone-only lines,
now that many people have switched to cable? Doesn't even
switching to DSL end up using new central station hardware, leaving
old phone-only hardware unused?

This seems unlikely because intercity calls began approx.
1960 to use microwave rather than cable links between
cities. Modern circuitry has allowed microwave capacity
to increase to supply current demand just about all the
time. Even if cell phones do not wholly supersede
wired telephones, the same circuitry could be applied
to supply phone service on a smaller scale.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)