When dialup was the most common way of getting to the 'net, this led to problems. Telephone use patterns are predictable, and the call lengths follow a nice distribution, thereby making it easy for phone companies to "oversell" and provision their networks very accurately, yet with nobody getting a busy signal except in uncommon circumstances.
Modem calls, however, are long, and tie up circuits for hours on end; this clogged phone switches, and phone companies, I'm pretty sure, were trying to push for a modem call surcharge for this reason.
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When dialup was the most common way of getting to the 'net, this led to problems. Telephone use patterns are predictable, and the call lengths follow a nice distribution, thereby making it easy for phone companies to "oversell" and provision their networks very accurately, yet with nobody getting a busy signal except in uncommon circumstances.
Modem calls, however, are long, and tie up circuits for hours on end; this clogged phone switches, and phone companies, I'm pretty sure, were trying to push for a modem call surcharge for this reason.