"Don Phillipson" wrote in message
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"mm" wrote in message
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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.

Most dialup calls were local calls, not intercity. And most people didn't
get a second line, so number of lines was never a problem. Number of lines
in use at any given time may have spiked, but the gooey GUI internet ramped
up same time as analog cell tower build out, so the hardline switches were
adding capacity anyway. I'm sure there were problems here and there, but no
more than a new office park or something opening up would cause. Ma Bell, in
general, was very good at building in plenty of headroom, and service
brownouts since switching from mechanical to electronic switches has been
very rare, like after disasters, or in the actual disaster areas if switches
get taken out.

Main cause for all the area code splits was the exponential growth of cell
phones sucking up available numbers.

aem sends...