Short for plain old telephone service, which refers to the standard telephone service that most homes use. In contrast, telephone services based on high-speed, digitalcommunications lines, such as ISDN and FDDI, are not POTS. The main distinctions between POTS and non-POTS services are speed and bandwidth. POTS is generally restricted to about 52 Kbps (52,000 bits per second).
POTS should not be confused with pot, an abbreviation of potentiometer.
Article on cable modems This Byte magazine article, from September 1996, provides information on the development of technologies that will solve bandwidth problems, with information on cable modems, ADSL, copper vs. coaxial, phone and cable problems, and infrastructure debates.
