When Mom was stuck with using a modem, I bought her a (literal) stack of USR Courier v.Everything modems (cheap, since a lot of ISPs in Austin were ditching dia

When Mom was stuck with using a modem, I bought her a (literal) stack of USR Courier v.Everything modems (cheap, since a lot of ISPs in Austin were ditching dialup service around that time). She had lightning hits and storms so often that I told her "if you try to dial up and the modem isn't working, just unplug it, toss it in the trash, and plug in the next one off the stack." Had to do this even with surge protection inline for both power and phone line. Only in the past couple of years have I been able to get an LTE phone signal at her house (only while standing on the porch, not inside the building) and that's from a tower a few miles away...