On Wed, 14 Feb 2007 20:33:17 -0600, larry wrote:

mm wrote:

To alt.home.repair:

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. There are people who
spent maybe a half hour a day on the phone before the net, who must
have spent 12 hours a day on the phone/modem after the net. Combined
with all those who only used it for an hour extra, that's an enormous
increase.

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. But I'm
sure most people are not that considerate.

A lot of people have gone to cable now, but there was a period were
20, 40, 80? million people had dial-up and they stayed on for hours
and hours, maybe all day. (Now that I know usage has slacked off, and
I've never heard of shortages, I've stayed on for 36 hours once, for
some reason I forget. And other days 12 hours.)

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?

dsl "rides" on existing phone cable. and with folks using
dsl and cable, the need for phone LINES for internet have
dropped.


Some people have more phone "numbers" than lines. Some places they
call this "smart ring".

but there still are big problems with phone NUMBERS, there
just weren't enough for all the new uses (cellphones, faxes,
and other data devices). most of the US has gone to
mandatory 10 digit dialing and 10,000 number blocks are no
longer handed out to new phone companies. even so, plans
are in place to go to four digit area codes when the number
combinations available finally run out.

-larry / dallas
--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.laughingsquid.com

"Unlike biological evolution. 'intelligent design' is
not a genuine scientific theory and, therefore, has
no place in the curriculum of our nation's public
school classes." -- Ted Kennedy