I'm still on dialup,and I usually log on at 48K,according to the W98SE
taskbar indicator.Sometimes,it logs on at 49K,but it's never stable.
ISTR that the max limit was 52K,but was usually limited by coils in the
lines.
At least in Europe, the "56k" only worked in the downlink direction,
i.e. the ISP had a typically a E1 (2.048 Mbit/s) connection for 30
subscribers and a bit by bit copy at 64 kbit/s 8000 samples/s was
delivered to the DAC in the telephone exchange of the subscriber.
Theoretically, the 8 bits/sample can represent 256 analog values,
since the floating point A-law representations use different step
sizes depending of the "amplitude", the smallest steps are about the
same size as a the LSB of a 12 bit DAC.
The cabling from the local exchange to the subscriber modem will
distort the waveform to the modem and the equalizer in the modem tries
to compensate for the distorted waveform and tries to determine which
actual analog voltage was generated by the DAC. In practice, about
50-100 discrete voltage levels can be reliably detected, thus about
5.5-6.5 bits/sample can be transferred, corresponding to 44-52 kbit/s.
Of course, any noise in the subscriber cable (such as crosstalk from
ADSL connections in other pairs) will degrade the SNR and hence reduce
the throughput.
In the US, the T1 connection and u-law compression may have different
constraints. Are they still using in-band signaling ? This at least
caused a lot of problems in early ISDN and pre-ISDN connections across
the Pond.
If the telco would deliberate want to force the use of 28k even on
downlink, then they either would have to add some LSB noise to the
samples, but only when the sample "amplitude" is low, which would
appear as a slightly added noise in a voice contact. Alternatively,
some analog noise would have to be added after each DAC in each
telephone exchange.