[o11c]

It's not a matter of what the modems were capable of, it's a matter of what the phone line would and could actually carry. Maybe it would be different in a big city, but I don't think I ever saw anybody get over 33.6 before upgrading to DSL.

[aidenn0]

33.6 was the highest V.90 specified for output over an analog connection. ISPs would have a digital connection the phone company and the signal (ideally) would stay digital until it was turned analog to send over your local loop. This is why it was 33.6kbps up and 56kbps down. I believe the regulatory limit was 53kbps in the US, and it was not uncommon for my modem to negotiate something in the 40s, as we had a somewhat long local loop (hence my RBOC denying us DSL; we had a local loop that was 2 "kilofeet" too long).

[Delk]

I lived in a city but I got a connection at ~48k on a V.90 regularly.

It did depend on line quality, though. We had some kinds of splitters and internal cabling in the house for allowing multiple phones (and eventually the modem), and I remember that prior to some changes made to that, I only used to get up to ~40k.