The Sportster® modem brand was just one of the company's many products designed to connect people to the Internet and each other. It is the USR Sportster, and the Courier modem, that made USR modems the modem of choice for the Internet revolution.
Throughout the years, modems have seen many changes, including the addition of such features as full duplex communications, error correction, adaptive speed leveling, and many other, now common features. The USR-310, one of the first USR modems, allowed customers to connect to other computers using their existing phone (that's right, phone, not phone line) at speeds up to 300 Bps. Today's USR modems operate at 56,000 bits per second, an increase of almost one hundred and eighty times.