SD-WAN includes that but it is not its sole purpose, although I agree most vendors will say that’s what you want. WAN/Link Aggregation, Multilink Aggregation, Link Load Balancing, Equal Cost Multipath, WAN Virtualisation, etc are ways to bundle multiple links together.

In WIFI terms, it’s called channel bonding, it was proprietary and various vendors had their own implementations, see “Super G”.

Indeed but in this particular case they’re using a large number of IPs, over 3000 on the last list I saw.

Nah that was just the talking clock. The wake up/reminder service was a ‘premium’ service accessible via 1234.

1194 in Australia, it was discontinued in 2019 after 66 years. It’s now on the internet http://1194online.com/

Sort of along the same vein - as unions grew weak in Australia a different way to represent workers was needed. Industry Superannuation funds were created. Workers pay into these retirement funds which in turn invest in the companies. These funds now represent the investors interest in the companies the investors work at.