Every landline provider seems to be pivoting to VoIP now.

    • Thorry84@feddit.nl
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      3 days ago

      Well my first modem was. It was very slow and you used it by dialing the phone yourself and placing the receiver on the modem. This is called an acoustic coupler.

      Later modems changed this by connecting directly to the outlet. This allowed for digital signals to be sent directly over the copper wires. This allows for much more bandwidth compared to just bleeping and blooping using audio. There were also in between variants which still used pure audio signals, but still connected directly to the outlet to improve signal quality.

      My computer back then also had a tape deck and I would record data using the tape deck. This was also a pure audio based signal. So in theory you could use a regular old tape deck with regular old tapes. However I had a specialized tape deck, specifically made for the computer and special “data” tapes. Not sure if they actually worked better, but I had them so I used them.

      Yes both my back and knees hurt.

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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      3 days ago

      Modem sounds are not a voice. I wonder how efficient digital communication over sounds that can be made with the human vocal system could get, and what it would sound like.