As copper line service continues to decline, businesses are switching to digital solutions. A POTS line replacement solution can centralize your infrastructure for easy management with a single provider. It can also provide failover cellular connectivity and future-proof cloud functionality.
Whether it’s life safety (fire alarm, burglar alarm, elevator communications), fax machines, or POS terminals, you can quickly move to digital connections with an adaptor solution.
The death toll for traditional copper phone lines may have been sounded, but it isn’t yet a done deal. Businesses that rely on POTS lines for essential communications like security alarms, emergency call boxes, fax machines, and gate or door access must transition to digital solutions before they lose connectivity.
Copper lines are costly to maintain, and as usage declines, telco providers are increasingly passing on the costs to users. It is driving a push for migration to digital solutions.
However, many business owners are concerned that they won’t be able to find a solution that will work with their existing hardware. In reality, many options that work with legacy analog hardware and connect directly to LTE cellular data networks are available, avoiding the need for a complete rip-and-replace project.
A centralized management system is a new, economical strategy for POTS line replacement options. It enables administrators to monitor every line from a single platform, making it simpler to find them when damage happens. Additionally, this reduces the number of person-hours spent troubleshooting problems and identifying which devices are down, reducing downtime. Choosing a solution that includes 24x7 support and monitoring will further increase the value of your investment.
The traditional POTS system is based on copper wires that run through a grid of equipment and cables that transfer voice calls. The grid comprises towers, lines, switches, and so on, which all must function correctly for a call to succeed. These networks can be vulnerable to storms, wildlife, and physical damage.
This infrastructure can also lead to expensive maintenance costs. Moreover, building redundancy into these networks can be challenging, which is vital for mission-critical applications like fire alarms and elevator lines. A digital POTS replacement solution can help organizations safely transition to a wireless network, providing many advantages over traditional analog phone lines.
Many organizations have legacy devices that rely on analog copper phone lines, including fire and security alarms, point-of-sale systems, ATMs, gate access, and fax machines. A digital POTS replacement solution can connect these devices to a broadband or 4G LTE network, offering better reliability than analog and enabling the business to save money on telecommunications costs. It can also provide redundancy and active monitoring to keep these legacy devices connected. It can help businesses to stay in business and avoid the loss of revenue that may result from a loss of connectivity.
While many business owners have sounded the death knell for landline phones, copper analog lines still support essential devices such as elevator emergency phones, security alarms, fax machines, and fire panels. It is why competent telecom managers are looking at alternatives to traditional POTS lines that are more cost-efficient, remote-friendly, and scalable.
As the copper infrastructure becomes more expensive, telecommunication carriers are phasing out traditional POTS lines and transferring the costs to consumers. It makes it even more critical for businesses to move away from legacy analog lines and embrace a new connectivity solution like cellular or VoIP.
One of the biggest reasons to switch to digital solutions is reliability. Analog phone lines rely on a physical connection, meaning that damage to the line can cause downtime across your entire network. Since digital platforms don’t rely on a physical connection, these types of problems can be resolved much more quickly, which reduces the amount of time your business is out of commission.
It’s also worth mentioning that they may offer volume pricing if you have many analog lines with the same carrier. Talk to your telecom consultant to see if you can use this to save on POTS line replacement and other bundled services. It can significantly cut your monthly phone bill while improving overall network reliability.
Old telephone service lines are used for more than just desk phones but also critical life safety devices like fire alarms and elevator communication systems. Those life safety systems often must respond in split-second emergencies and need reliable phone line verification to alert emergency personnel.
For most companies, switching from POTS to a digital solution is necessary. Copper line infrastructure is aging, and it’s becoming increasingly expensive to support the services that run over them. Fortunately, digital solutions offer cost savings and reliability improvements over legacy POTS technology.
While inertia can play a role in organizations continuing to use their POTS lines, this approach has risks. As costs continue to rise, the risk of outages will only increase, and the time to replace these critical life safety lines with a more stable delivery option.
One benefit of moving from a POTS line to a digital solution is the ability to build redundancy into your business appliances and equipment, especially those critical for your life safety systems. With VoIP and cellular services, you can create multiple layers of redundancy, so you’re covered even when your main POTS line goes down. You can also find solutions that monitor your endpoints and provide a central management portal to make it easier to manage your devices.
