I read that the PSTN or POTS has been digital since the 1980s. It uses 8 KHz, 8 bit sampling = 64 kbps. So does this mean that digital information is sent through telephone lines? (other than DSL).
Does this mean that your landline phone is technically a modem or a has a modem in it? And circuitry to decode the digital signal?
In: Technology
Not really — a modem, conventionally, is a thing that takes digital data and encodes it into analog signal so you can get the digital data back (the same digital data).
A phone, even an ISDN phone, takes your sound (analog signal) and encodes it into digital data, which then goes on the line.
You could consider the part of the phone that takes the digital data containing the samples of your sound and sends it over the line a modem, probably. Not sure it’s a useful description.
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