friend: remember how, well into the 2000s, modem manufacturers were pushing v.92 support as hard as they could, splashing it all over the box like it mattered
me, speculating: that was the only lever they could pull to try to avoid their inevitable and obvious death. consider that very few of the dialup modem mfgrs made it into the DSL market - USR and Hayes, for instance, never made it to broadband, because they had no real skills, they were just putting Rockwell ICs on boards like everyone else. the companies that did make the leap, like Zoom and Alcatel, had actual engineers. in fact, i bet alcatel was making their own DSL ICs
google images, immediately: ALCATEL DYNAMITE
edit: oops, actually, us robotics had engineers - they were still selling DSP-based modems up until the bitter end.
