Modems started out being commercially available to home users in the early eighties.
Most people can READ faster than that.
Internal and external modems still exist today. Well, from there on out, things pretty much took off. 4800 was rapidly followed by 9600. Fax capability became possible. 14.4 modems are still in wide use today, but are considered sort of 'slow' though they handle web pages and email acceptably.