On Wed, 16 Jan 2019 14:31:18 -0600, Mark Lloyd
wrote:

On 1/16/19 12:35 PM, Randy Stevensen wrote:

[snip]

Back in the "good old days" when I had AT&T pots, My line often had
static or the sound of frying bacon or sometimes a hum that made
conversation difficult at best.

T would repair it but the fix never lasted more than 6 months or so.
T's dialup internet service was a joke.

I had a lot of that trouble. That was probably the main reason I
switched to cable phone service, which cost about half as much and no
extra charge for call waiting ID.

Dial up was OK for what we were doing at the time, mostly text mode
stuff and an occasional low resolution picture. The arrival of MP3s in
the late 90s drove the broadband thing for me.
Cable internet was OK here until Comcast bought out my provider and
the service went down hill until the point that I cut the drop and
left it laying in the road, going for slower but far more reliable DSL
from the Telco. Comcast still sucks here. My FIL didn't even have TV
service for about half of December. They were out there a dozen times
but couldn't keep it running more than a half a day.
Irma was the first time I lost POTS/DSL for more than a few minutes.
The batteries in the concentrator died after about 28 hours and it
took them several days to bring a generator out there.
My broadband was up during the whole storm tho but without power I was
running dial up until I got my generator going. I was still getting
V.34 speed up and about 48k down, plenty for sending pictures.