Its understandable that after all that you might still be confused,
after all this is very technical information.  Its not a trivial 
matter to understand this and the more complicated this technology
gets, the more complicated the answers to questions become.  We
do our best to simplify the answers as much as possible but there
is a level at which if we go below the message is lost.

We don't know what else we can say about this matter that we have not
covered in our faqs but here is another stab to describe the situation as
clearly as I see it.

We simply don't have enough knowledge of the specific work and routing
being performed in the SW Bell/Centel network to be able to give anyone
precise answers.  I can give you theory, I can make assumptions on how
many u-law encoding's you encounter or how many analog to digital
conversions and digital to analog conversions you experience on your way
through the telephone network; I can do this by analyzing the signal to
noise levels, db tx and rx levels and then looking them up in a table.
This table will basically say this.  If you have signal to noise level of
X, V34 will dictate that you connect at X.  In fact I have the AT&T table
in front of me which corresponds perfectly with what we see on our modem
stats. The process of a phone call is simply like this: you place a call
to us. When you get here you only have x amount of voltage signal vs non
signal voltage as a result of the impairments encountered along your
journey. We cannot break the laws of physics and I cannot send a signal
with a symbol rate of 3200 on a line that due to impairments can only
support a 2800 symbol rate. 

 I am a mechanical engineer and have had to take advanced electrical
design courses so I think that I can have some credibility when discussing
electronic signal theory. I also have been working with telephone network
systems for ten years and yet I still cannot possibly tell you the precise
impairments in impedance, resistance and voltage that result from your
connection without specific information on the specific lengths and
properties of cables and equipment that are involved in providing the
connection to your residence (i.e. a schematic).  As an engineer yourself
imagine if you were to design a circuit, that interfaced into another
device, however, you were not provided any information on that device like
the ranges that it was designed to handle, or the effect of varying inputs
and loads would have on the output?  Imagine building a bridge but you
were only allowed to design half of it and were given sketchy information
on the characteristics, load bearing capabilities and other factors
related to the other half of the bridge??.  Pretty impossible design
job..huh?  Most engineers would not risk their reputation by being
involved in such a project and they definitely would not put their
guarantee on the safety of that bridge or its abilities to support a load.

However in the case of providing Internet services, I suppose that one
could make the argument that since the monopolistic telephone companies
control the current array of wires and equipment making up the telephone
network, it would be irresponsible for any network engineer to try to
build a network that interfaces with theirs and then try to support
customers. Well, IMHO that would mean, not progressing.  We would have to
sit and wait for the telephone companies to eventually provide these
services to allow our computer to communicate with one another.  How long
do you think that would take without the prompting and prodding of
ISPs?..well if their past history is of any indication, in 1990 in Killeen
there was analog equipment that was dated back to the 50's!!..:(
Additionally, the services I purchase from the telephone company are
guaranteed to provide the functionality that is required according to my
network design.  If SW Bell or Centel fail to live up to the claims made
by their sales people, I do not have the luxury of moving to another
competitor to acquire those same services, such is the nature of living
under a monopoly.  Even if AT&T and MCI make it in here to provide local
services they will still be using SW Bell's local loop copper and
equipment, so all we've done is add another layer of beauracracy to the
pile..which will really make things slow down.

However, I personally, I think that sometimes its necessary to push the
envelope a little, I mean..imagine if we never settled the West because
there just weren't enough roads and Calvary to protect from Indian
attacks?  The Internet is still a baby..growing like wildfire and it is
breaking the backs of the telephone companies that have been sitting
around rather complacently for a few decades, and forcing them into
action.

So to get back to the technical description that you are looking for if
you want to know the actual electrical characteristics from the 2 copper
leads leading into the back of your modem into the digital stream of data
that arrives are in our digital modems, you will need to request this from
SW Bell/Centel.  SW Bell/Centel will absolutely not provide us with that
information.  That is proprietary information that belongs to them and we
have no more chance of obtaining than the ordinary consumer does.  We are
merely customers of the telephone company and we contract their services
and request that they pass telephone calls from customers to our location
and we request that the integrity of that call remains in tact. 

According to PUC regulations, all we can do is request that they maximize
the connect rate.  The law dictates that we cannot force them to provide
connect rates above 300bps on ANALOG lines.  If you do not believe please
contact the Public Utilities Commission in Austin to confirm.  1998 will
bring that minimum speed to 2400bps.  That's 2.4kbps less than a 10th of a
28.8k connection and it took 20 years to step it up to that!!

I can make a summary analysis of the line characteristics that are due to
the sum total of all line impairments from your copper to our digital
system, and it will basically be the v34 table showing that your connect
rate is due to the signal noise levels and symbol rates.

There is one absolute in digital networks... db loss is 0. That is the
nature of digital.  Their are no coils or capacitors to affect the signal
levels.  All parameters are generated by computers at the telephone
company and at our digital modems to reconstruct the packets that are the
encoded analog signals.  If an ISP goes digital, that's it..there is no
where else to go except upgrade the software in the routers to support
things like K56Flex, X2, ISDN..etc. (which we support..which is rather
easy once you go digital)

Although digital modems can vary in their algorithms there is simply
nothing fundamentally that one digital modem can do that another cannot.
They must follow the rules set forth by ITU and electrical laws and
although engineers can take liberties in the design of the software (which
its is all software by the way), they still cannot leave the bounds of
reality.  We have digital modem banks from the 3 leading providers, USR,
Ascend and Cisco..and although there are slight variations in the way the
3 of them handle calls and decode analog signals and pass them onto their
digital buses; there is in reality very little difference between the at
the modem level.  We have tried all 3 and prefer Cisco, because once you
go digital, the modems are actually a very insignificant part of an ISP's
equipment and Cisco has been the leader in networking equipment for a
long time. In fact the act of converting digitized analog encoded signals
into digital bits and bytes is quite a trivial task for a device as
complicated as a router.  That's not where it does its straining..some
people think that connect rates at an ISP are a factor of the load on a
particular router..that is absolutely not true.. connect rates are
determined by one thing and one thing alone..the electrical
characteristics as interpreted by the decoded analog packets.  Our digital
modems are told what speed this connection will be made at, they do not
make that decision themselves, they are under the regulation of physical
laws and ITU standards.

Now analog modem banks are another matter.  An ISP with analog modems can
have an impact on the connect speeds possible to his location.  For
example when we started a long time ago, we did discover that the
telephone company had routed some of our trunks near the ballasts of
fluorescent lights.  Once we removed this impairment we saw a slight
improvement.  This continuous discussion of modem connect speeds and the
ISP should really no longer be an issue for digital ISPs.  When we got
calls about low connect rates 2 years ago, we acknowledged that their was
new technology on the horizon that was just becoming available that would
eliminate any impairment on the ISP side.  This will NOT do anything to
minimize the impairments that are a consequence of analog signal
degradation within the telephone company..but once the call gets delivered
to the digital network..it could go all the way to Brazil and still remain
100% intact.  For example,  when USR calls in to test our systems..they
get actual 56K connect speeds..because they go through 0 (zero) analog
systems..all 100% digital..there is never a capacitor or electrical
circuit that their call passes through that will affect the call in
anyway.  If the bits leaving Virginia are 01001 then bits arriving in
Temple are 01001.  With analog that is not the case..analog is not
discrete..it is a continuous signal.  In the same way that it is difficult
to get an 100% accurate reading on a analog voltmeter versus one with
a digital display so it is with telephone analog signals being transmitted
from one point to another.  Analog signals transmitted from point A to
point B lose their integrity with distance..period!.. Digital signals do
not. period. 0 db loss. period


We still have a few analog lines left on 526-6924 but the 616-xxxx numbers
are all digital and there are no copper wires than can be recrimped or
reconditioned, that's it..there is no tightening of any nuts or wires that
will change digital characteristics. (There is nothing between 0 and 1)

T1's are conditioned lines.  They are by definition guaranteed by the
telephone company to meet minimum electrical requirements so that an
absolute minimum CIR is met (1.544mbps).  The analog lines you purchase
from Centel are guaranteed by the PUC of a CIR of (300bps).. Yes that's
right 300bps..that is the CIR (Committed Information Rate) currently
regulated on standard residential analog lines.  

Now we've done are part..on our side we no longer purchase analog
residential lines rated at 300bps..we purchase T1's only (purely digital,
guaranteed by the telephone company) to 1,500,000 bps.

Like any chain, however, it doesn't do much good if we have this huge link
made out of titanium and there are a few links made out of copper in the
middle and then a few links make out of brass and then the final link made
out of play dough.  I hate to say this but your analog line from your
house to the CO is the equivalent of playdough to our steel T1's that come
into our digital modems. 

If you are getting fluctuations in the connect rates from day to day,
their is a much higher probability that their have been changes in the
electrical characteristics of the analog network somewhere in your area.
A change in a digital modem firmware could have some affect on the way
that the modems make a determination on the maximum connect speed, but
changing modem software will have absolutely nothing to do with the
underlying electrical characteristics that result in line impairments that
result in varying connect speeds.

As an engineer I would be surprised if you would take the results of one
experiment and make a conclusion based on that.  You have determined that
your connect rates dropped approximately around the time that we performed
our upgrade.  With that single piece of information it would be very
un-scientific to make a determination that it was the upgrades that
resulted in your apparent 25% speed decrease..wouldn't you agree?

Have you taken into consideration that also at this precise moment there
are more SW bell and Sprint Engineers in the Central Texas are than
anywhere in the southwestern United States doing continuous daily
upgrades? (source: SW Bell 12/3/97).  Why would you think that would be
the case? I cannot say for sure because I am not officially notified when
companies like Sprint and SW Bell do upgrades, since in their eyes I am no
more important than you the ordinary residential customer; however I would
surmise that this is due to the unprecedented growth of the Internet in an
area that is not considered the largest or most advanced metropolitan city
in the region.  The Growth of Internet per capita here has been many times
that of Austin when you take the size of the population of Central Texas
versus Austin into account.

As for a solution to the problem, there are 7 that I can think of:

1.	Lobby the telephone companies to increase their CIR
2.	Lobby the PUC to legislate the telco's to increase their CIR
3.	Wait for the telco's to upgrade their networks.
4.	Come to the conclusion that your analog lines will never
	reasonably be able to provide an acceptable CIR and purchase
	digital as in ISDN or 56K circuits.
5.	Lobby Cable companies to provide Internet Services in your area
6.	Lobby Satellite companies to provide services.
7.	Do the heterogeneous nature of the telephone network, if you
	find that you can get consistently higher connect rates by
	dialing another provider, then that might be a consideration;
	however, I would be warned that the telephone network is like
	shifting sands, if you choose your provider based upon the
	connect rates to one versus the other in March those values
	could swap by May.
	For example, we have always only receive 24,000 connects from
	within our offices here.  We have some plain old telephone lines
	from SW Bell and we can call into the CO's just like any other
	customer and the fact that our modems are in the room next door
	provides no advantage to us.
	Just in the past few days, we have begun to start seeing 
	28,800 connections even before we did the upgrades to the
	modems..at the same time we saw many SW Bell trucks near the
	phone office down the street for about 3 days.  We don't 
	know what they did if they did anything.  It could have been
	something completely different that changed our connect rates.
	 They may go back to 24000 tomorrow or even lower, and we
	understand that because that is the nature of analog lines..
	They are not consistent..period.  If you want consistency
	you absolutely have to have digital services like ISDN..there
	is no physical way around that.

Solutions NOT Recommended:

As for pressuring the local ISP, I won't discount that the pressure you
place on us to do what we can to improve connect speeds doesn't have some
effect, but it is insignificant compared to the affect that persuading and
pressuring the telephone companies have.  We actually spend a huge chunk
of our resources just trying to explain this same question every day..
I have answered this question over 200 times and each letter was
written by hand on that day and was not a canned reply but the facts
as I knew them up to that point in time.  If we could spend more time
focusing on the business of being an ISP we could probably have 
more of an impact in the long run in having some influence in connect
speeds.  The continuous bombardment of a tired old question that we have
absolutely no control over, hurts not only us but our customers and 
in the long run delays the advancement of technology.

The bottom line is, is that the telephone company is the middle man that
passes a call from you to us.  We can use the latest technology available,
which we do (digital) to ensure that we do not lose a grain of integrity
once the call is handed to us (which we don't); however, if by the time
the call arrives at our location, it has already lost significant
integrity then there is no amount of upgrades or creative engineering that
can reassemble packets with missing data in them, all we can do is
negotiate with your modem to connect at the highest speed possible under
the circumstances so that your data remains intact. 

Regards and I hope this helps,