Beginning in 1980, a concerted effort was made by the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (CCITT; a predecessor of the ITU) to define a new standard for modems that would permit full-duplex data transmission at 9.6 kilobits per second over a single-pair circuit operating over the PSTN. Two breakthroughs were required in this effort. First, in order to fit high-speed full-duplex data transmission over a single telephone circuit, echo cancellation technology was required so that the sending modem’s transmitted signal would not be picked up by its own receiver. Second, in order to permit operation of the new standard over unconditioned PSTN circuits, a new form of coded modulation was developed. In coded modulation, error-correcting codes form an integral part of the modulation process, making the signal less susceptible to noise. The first modem standard to incorporate both of these technology breakthroughs was the V.32 standard, issued in 1984. This standard employed a form of coded modulation known as trellis-coded modulation, or TCM. Seven years later an upgraded V.32 standard was issued, permitting 14.4-kilobit-per-second full-duplex data transmission over a single PSTN circuit.

In mid-1990 the CCITT began to consider the possibility of full-duplex transmission over the PSTN at even higher rates than those allowed by the upgraded V.32 standard. This work resulted in the issuance in 1994 of the V.34 modem standard, allowing transmission at 28.8 kilobits per second.

The third generation

The engineering of modems from the Bell 103 to the V.34 standard was based on the assumption that transmission of data over the PSTN meant analog transmission—i.e., that the PSTN was a circuit-switched network employing analog elements. The theoretical maximum capacity of such a network was estimated to be approximately 30 Kbps, so the V.34 standard was about the best that could be achieved by voiceband modems.

In fact, the PSTN evolved from a purely analog network using analog switches and analog transmission methods to a hybrid network consisting of digital switches, a digital “backbone” (long-distance trunks usually consisting of optical fibres), and an analog “local loop” (the connection from the central office to the customer’s premises). Furthermore, many Internet service providers (ISPs) and other data services access the PSTN over a purely digital connection, usually via a T1 or T3 wire or an optical-fibre cable. With analog transmission occurring in only one local loop, transmission of modem signals at rates higher than 28.8 Kbps is possible. In the mid-1990s several researchers noted that data rates up to 56 Kbps downstream and 33.6 Kbps upstream could be supported over the PSTN without any data compression. This rate for upstream (subscriber to central office) transmissions only required conventional QAM using the V.34 standard. The higher rate in the downstream direction (that is, from central office to subscriber), however, required that the signals undergo “spectral shaping” (altering the frequency domain representation to match the frequency impairments of the channel) in order to minimize attenuation and distortion at low frequencies.

In 1998 the ITU adopted the V.90 standard for 56-Kbps modems. Because various regulations and channel impairments can limit actual bit rates, all V.90 modems are “rate adaptive.” Finally, in 2000 the V.92 modem standard was adopted by the ITU, offering improvements in the upstream data rate over the V.90 standard. The V.92 standard made use of the fact that, for dial-up connections to ISPs, the loop is essentially digital. Through the use of a concept known as precoding, which essentially equalizes the channel at the transmitter end rather than at the receiver end, the upstream data rate was increased to above 40 Kbps. The downstream data path in the V.92 standard remained the same 56 Kbps of the V.90 standard.