page_title: Modem
section_title: 1990s
hierarchical_section_title: Modem / Dial-up modem / Dial modem history / 1990s
caption_attribution_description: English: IBM PCMCIA Data/Fax Modem V.34 FRU 42H4326
context_page_description: A modem – a portmanteau of "modulator-demodulator" – is a hardware device that converts data from a digital format, intended for communication directly between devices with specialized wiring, into one suitable for a transmission medium such as telephone lines or radio. A modem modulates one or more carrier wave signals to encode digital information for transmission, and demodulates signals to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded reliably to reproduce the original digital data.
  Modems can be used with almost any means of transmitting analog signals, from light-emitting diodes to radio. A common type of modem is one that turns the digital data of a computer into a modulated electrical signal for transmission over telephone lines, to be demodulated by another modem at the receiver side to recover the digital data.
context_section_description: In the early 90s, V.32 modems operating at 9600 bit/s were introduced, but were expensive and were only starting to enter the market when V.32bis was standardized as well.
  Rockwell International's chip division developed a new driver chip set incorporating the V.32bis standard and aggressively priced it. Supra, Inc. arranged a short-term exclusivity arrangement with Rockwell, and developed the SupraFAXModem 14400 based on it. Introduced in January 1992 at $399 (or less), it was half the price of the slower V.32 modems already on the market. This led to a price war, and by the end of the year V.32 was dead, never having been really established, and V.32bis modems were widely available for $250.
  V.32bis was so successful that the older high-speed standards had little to recommend them. USR fought back with a 16,800 bit/s version of HST, while AT&T introduced a one-off 19,200 bit/s method they referred to as V.32ter, but neither non-standard modem sold well.
  Consumer interest in these proprietary improvements waned during the lengthy introduction of the 28,800 bit/s V.34 standard. While waiting, several companies decided to release hardware and introduced modems they referred to as V.FAST.
  In order to guarantee compatibility with V.34 modems once the standard was ratified (1994), manufacturers used more flexible components, generally a DSP and microcontroller, as opposed to purpose-designed ASIC modem chips. This would allow later firmware updates to conform with the standards once ratified.
  The ITU standard V.34 represents the culmination of these joint efforts. It employs the most powerful coding techniques available at the time, including channel encoding and shape encoding. From the mere four bits per symbol (9.6 kbit/s), the new standards used the functional equivalent of 6 to 10 bits per symbol, plus increasing baud rates from 2,400 to 3,429, to create 14.4, 28.8, and 33.6 kbit/s modems. This rate is near the theoretical Shannon limit of a phone line.
caption: V.34 data/fax modem as PC card for notebooks
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