by DyRE:
It wasn’t directly to give people a faster Internet connection but I think it was created because of some geek’s sister. See, this sister, she had a very active social life. Whenever she was home, she got phone calls out the wazoo. She wasn’t home much though, because her callers usually invited her somewhere. She was popular.
She had a very active social life.
She was popular.
Then her geeky little brother, who was petrified of social physical interaction, started going online via a dial-up connection… all the time. Soon this girl never got any calls because the line was always busy. Her parents didn’t want to pay for another phone line and she couldn’t afford one herself. Luckily, her father was a some sort of technician at [insert phone or cable company name here]. One day, he was brooding over his recent troubles concerning his daughter’s attempt to dismantle the computer to find which part was the modem and beat his son with it. As he contemplated this situation, he inadvertantly began staring at the phone line. Or the cable TV line. Whichever came first (DSL or cable modems). Suddenly, the idea hit him and he rushed off to the company offices to present this new high speed idea to his superiors. All of them having one popular child and one geeky child themselves thought it was wonderful. Thus, the phone line was free (until the girl began getting calls again) and the bandwidth was used like nobody’s business… and all were happy.
The end.
I honestly wouldn’t be suprised if thats how it actually happened. [originally posted at 4degreez.com]