A Brief History of the PSTN

Almost all WAN communications—dedicated point-to-point (D-PPP), dial-on-demand routing (DDR), and remote access dial (RA)—links are dependent on the PSTN for data transport. PSTN access is provided on a tariff regulated subscriber basis, depending on the country; the provider might be a private/publicly owned telephone exchange carrier or government-owned utility. PSTN access pricing is dependent on the type of PSTN connection, but it is generally either bandwidth/ usage-based or facility-based. Bandwidth/usage-based pricing is billed on a time usage rate based on bandwidth utilization. The basic home telephone uses this pricing. Users are billed on a per minute or per call basis for the use of a 64K PSTN channel. ...

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