Is it possible to update phone lines?

[Coligeon]

I, like many, am stuck with Dial-up, and like many, want to get the most out of it. Well....I don't lol. I can only connect at a max of 28.8 no matter what time of the day and no matter what modem/phone number I dial. My house is relatively old, about 17 years, so I figure it must obviously be the phone lines. I have no information on how/if you can evern do this, but I am sure it is costly. Funny, so many people say "Jeez, I wish I had broadband" well I say "Jeez, too bad I can't get 56k." Lol, oh well. Thanks for the inpute.

 

[rw120555]

I don't think 17 years is relatively old for a house! My 100 year old house did fine when we had dialup, and now it does fine with dsl. Having a phone company office 3 blocks away probably helps.

You might try running a long phone cord out to the gray phone box on the side of your house -- if your setup is like mine, you can open it up, unplug a phone jack, and plug in your phone cord. (Just remember to plug everything back in correctly, and don't do this a time when everyone will start screaming about the phone not working.) If your dialup connection starts zooming, you'll know there is some sort of problem inside the house. If it is as slow as ever, then that will indicate a problem external to your house (or maybe with your computer equipment).

If the connection did start zooming, you might then try unplugging all your phones -- sometimes a bad phone can create problems for all the connections. Replacing one phone would be cheaper than rewiring your house. Try different jacks too if you haven't already.

If you are really desperate for speed, you could check into satellite internet service providers. Before I did anything too expensive though, I'd want to make sure cable or dsl wasn't coming to my neighborhood in the next year.

Good luck. RW

 

[Abzstrak]

You probably have a multiplexed phone line. This happens alot in highly populated areas where the phone company doesn't feel like running extra lines.... Or it can happen when U order 2nd line cause they can add it without physically adding a second line... voice qualtiy is pretty much unnoticable, but modems usuualy max out at 28.8 or 26.4 on these lines no matter what you do.

The only way to change this (if its the case) is to have the phone company run another physical line. Usually the phone company what give a rats @ss and will blow you off though. I have heard from some people that if you order caller ID and call waiting on your modem line that it wont run on a multiplexed line, so the phone company will upgrade it, but I'm not sure if its true.