When I first saw an ad for a "soon to be released" 9600 bps modem, I excitedly mentioned it on a local BBS, where all of the older wiser users told me it was impossible and the ad must have been a joke. 1200 baud was still relatively new at the time and error prone even with a parity bit so I could understand some of their skepticism. The central offices were still in the process of being converted over to digital and lines were still noisy at times. As the quality of the local loop improved, so did modem speeds.