> If we're lucky, we'll be back to dialup BBSes by the 2040s.
Unfortunately, there's no going back - the closest we can get is BBS-via-SSH. The entire landline phone infrastructure is crumbling around us (or in many cases, completely gone). Voice calls are packet-switched now, rather than circuit-switched as in the past. The upshot is, fancy modulation techniques that made full-duplex 33.6k possible over voice-grade connections aren't going to work, and even good old Bell 103 (300 baud) may end up being problematic.
I'm not sure I can even get new landline phone service, and if so, it's going to be expensive - and the wire plant is an unmaintained mess. When I got my folks off their landline and onto VoIP some years back, their old landline had so much hum it was nearly unusable. Once the inside wiring was disconnected from the landline and connected to an ATA, the hum was gone. It wasn't our wiring.
Unfortunately, there's no going back - the closest we can get is BBS-via-SSH. The entire landline phone infrastructure is crumbling around us (or in many cases, completely gone). Voice calls are packet-switched now, rather than circuit-switched as in the past. The upshot is, fancy modulation techniques that made full-duplex 33.6k possible over voice-grade connections aren't going to work, and even good old Bell 103 (300 baud) may end up being problematic.
I'm not sure I can even get new landline phone service, and if so, it's going to be expensive - and the wire plant is an unmaintained mess. When I got my folks off their landline and onto VoIP some years back, their old landline had so much hum it was nearly unusable. Once the inside wiring was disconnected from the landline and connected to an ATA, the hum was gone. It wasn't our wiring.