Subj : Re: FidoGazette Vol 13 n
To   : Daryl Stout
From : Simon Geddes
Date : Wed Sep 18 2019 21:13:00

At 1:01 PM on 15 Sep 19, Daryl Stout said to Mike Powell:

DS> Mike,

MP>>Sorry to butt in - but I hope more BBSes start to offer dial-up. And more
MP>users
MP>>switch off their routers and dust off their modems.

MP>I have a dial up system - 1-502-875-8938

DS>   At present, I have a US Robotics external v.92 56K Fax Modem. However,
DS> I'm not about to pay $75 a month for a vanilla phone line, just to get
DS> dial-up BBS callers...especially after the rude way my late Mom and
DS> myself were treated by AT&T "customer service personnel" (I use the term
DS> loosely). On a call, when I demanded to speak to a supervisor, they hung
DS> up on me. When I dialed back, and was told "this call may be monitored
DS> or recorded", I said "It damn sure better be, for ahat I'm going to
DS> say".

DS>   I apologized to my Mom for cussing in front of her, but when I asked
DS> "can you blame me for my outburst?", she said "No"...she was there and
DS> heard everything that happened.

Sounds like pretty terrible service. You would think with plenty of competition 
such poor service would be a thing of the past. Maybe you moving on will help 
them review their customer service methods.

DS>   As for cellphone service, I'm with Straight Talk, and it's the best
DS> cellphone package I've ever had...$50 a month with tax, and I get 25
DS> Gigabytes of data, before it gets throttled down. I use nowhere near
DS> that amount each month. And, with the rewards plan, some months, I can
DS> claim the points, so I get a free month of cellphone service.

Sounds pretty good. I had half a gig of cell phone data for the longest time. I 
probably should have been paying a lot less.

DS>   But back to the dial-up, those modems only really work with analog
DS> lines, and not with VoIP lines. Yet, I wonder what the fax machines are
DS> working with...since practically all the old analog lines are now
DS> digital/VoIP. If there was a way to make that work, I'd put dial-up
DS> access back on the BBS...but I saw a comment from Rob Swindell (aka
DS> digital man), author of Synchronet, noting that "28.8 and 33.6 aren't as
DS> fast as you remember them".

This is a worry really, as may scupper my dial-up dreams before they have 
begun. I haven't noticed any major issues here in the UK however, but I dare 
say digitial migration and VoIP is being rolled out at a snail's pace. I know 
we have much less fast broadband coverage than many other European countries. 
If this does become an issue, I wonder if cell phone modems (cdcadm protocol, I 
think) might provide another route? With a cheap sim with unlimited calls in a 
cell phone USB modem, I could potentially add multiple dial-up lines for not 
very much at all.

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