The school was likely using ISDN or some sort of digital phone setup and you lucked out. Hotels used to have a special data port on the room handset that you c

The school was likely using ISDN or some sort of digital phone setup and you lucked out. Hotels used to have a special data port on the room handset that you could use because the main line was digital (either ISDN or something else). Even then I could typically only get 28-33k, not the 53k (I never, ever got a pure 56k connection).