Our industry has been inundated with news about the demise of POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) lines. Recently, the FCC issued a new order with the goal of abandoning the rapidly deteriorating copper wiring infrastructure throughout the US. Through this order, the FCC is allowing Local Exchange Carriers (LECs) to stop providing analog POTS services.
Carriers now have the option to stop providing these services while being allowed to increase the price those services. We’ve seen carriers announce “end of life” plans for their services in the next year and carriers raise the rate for a single analog phone line to quadruple the monthly rates as an enticement to move to IP-based communications using their fiber or cellular networks.
From a carrier perspective, there are many reasons to move customers away from the legacy copper services. The carrier equipment to support those services is old – difficult and expensive to maintain. The workforce that supports this equipment is retiring and not being replaced. In addition, it is expensive to put copper in the ground.
Services that you most likely are using POTS for include things like: fax machines, fire alarms, elevators, and security alarms. These services may not be at the top of your technical project list, but they are critically important to your organization. These services may not be forced to be replaced right away, but the cost will rise significantly, and you may not be able to get the services in the future from your provider.
Now is the time to plan. There are solutions that can be deployed to replace those lines – driven by your schedule and requirements.
For a guide to help you through the maze of issues and options – give us a call or reply back to this email.