Everything already is VOIP. You haven't been able to use a modem on a phone line in fifteen years. The problem is these behemoth telecommunication companies. There's no reason at all for the phone system not to be exactly like using any sane video messenger software of the last twenty years, except for those big ass phone companies that will do anything to keep from becoming "dumb pipes" of this kind of telephony.

> You haven't been able to use a modem on a phone line in fifteen years.

I was using a dialup modem in 2013. There are also a bunch of dialup ISPs that still exist today and provide service over phone lines to people with dialup modems. Maybe what you say is true in some areas but it certainly is false as a blanket statement.

I believe you can use a modem over G711... I know for sure you can send faxes over it (I’ve done it) despite it being VoIP.

Yes, faxing is done with T.38, and faxing is actually more reliable than using a modem. I spent some years running a fax system over VOIP and trying to get it to work. It's doable (as in some special cases of using a modem over VOIP lines) but it's absolutely not doable in most other contexts on VOIP for various reasons including signal compression and packet loss, and the parent is dreaming if they think they can hook their 14.4 modem up and dump that signal onto a "telephone" line to (for example) a BBS in another timezone and have it work. The key here is non-local, not the copper lines the parent commenter is still using to dial up a local ISP. This is obviously a special case of the telephone company local to their area maintaining the copper lines for whatever purposes, keeping the copper from their house to a local ISP gateway. But Comcast and Verizon have been actively ripping copper lines out wherever they buy up local phone companies that still have them. I have asked the phone companies for an actual copper landline in every major city I've lived in over the last ten years and couldn't get one, specifically trying to make my life easier running this system I mentioned earlier. The special edge case exception is actually having a copper line to your local ISP. It's definitely not the rule. Don't believe me? Take a few minutes to call up the phone companies in cities around the country and ask for a copper phone line. Almost all of them won't have copper. And I'm telling you from years of experience that using a modem across a non-copper VOIP line is flaky in exceptionally good circumstances and impossible in most cases.

In my case I was faxing over plain G711 through a SIP to analog phone jack converter. Not saying it’s a good idea or reliable, but it worked in my case.

So the parent post could’ve very well thought he had used his modem on a real copper line while in fact it was VoIP, just the compression was light enough that it still worked fine like in my case.

No clue if I had a copper line. I didn't mean to dispute that it was or wasn't VOIP or copper, my point was only that I was using a dialup modem five years ago, in direct contradiction to the statement that they haven't worked for 15 years. This was in Chambersburg, PA through Centurylink.