Interesting. v.34 ratified in 1994 supported 33.6 kbit/s. In at least some areas POTS calls to local prefixes were unmetered. ISDN BRI had similar, if not identical, tariff.
i guess you're right about 33.6kbps... point stands, if you wanted to go faster than analog modems in residential settings, before DSL and DOCSIS, ISDN was often the only game in town.
BRI did not have free local calling with pacific bell at the time and "local long distance" or metered within NPA calling was quite expensive- often times a lot more expensive than actual long distance calling.
The 56k modem was a quasi-digital connection and as I recall asymmetric.
xDSL (there were so many flavors) was a disappointment in some areas in comparison to ISDN for reasons I do not recall, but I think it had to do with the fact that it often shared the copper with POTS. xDSL on former ISDN lines or in buildings wired for xDSL was far more performant. DOCSIS was generally good.
Also, modems and ISDN, owing to their switched nature, could be used to connect to services other than the Internet. xDSL and especially DOCSIS was Internet only AFAIR.
> The 56k modem was a quasi-digital connection and as I recall asymmetric.
ahh yeah i forgot about that. the other side was direct digital and often ISDN PRI. ascend (or what was left after lucent bought them) made a device called the portmaster 3 that had a two port PRI and an ethernet port. it was an all in one 56k dialin modem bank, SLIP/PPP endpoint and router that would provide ~26 dialup lines with just a few cables.
i believe the way it worked was that it spoke digitally to the customers local C/O and then would do the DAC for the downstream channel with the shortest possible local loop allowing for more aggressive trades of reliability for bandwidth. it was all transparent to the customer though, they'd just buy a 56k modem and plug it into a POTS line.
