What Is POTS Replacement And Why Businesses Are Switching To It
By Jim Machi - CMO
POTS replacement is a hot topic these days, given that the FCC mandated that POTS lines (think copper wires) should be phased out by August 2022. Many Service Providers wanted this since the POTS lines were/are hard to maintain which came with rising costs to keep these networks going, digital networks came to the fore which enabled more bandwidth, more speed, and the ability to send different types of data (such as video), and wireless/VoIP technologies rendered POTS lines behind the times anyway. In short, the internet and wireless technologies are better and cheaper.
But there are many endpoints in businesses that use POTS lines (i.e. are analog) such as phones, alarms, faxes, etc. So, for a business to fully move to the newer networks, all the analog endpoints would need to be updated to be compatible with the newer networks. This is not feasible from a cost perspective and re-architecture of your business perspective. This is just not as simple as replacing the analog endpoint either. In many cases, there are “systems” behind the endpoint, and it would also mean changing out the system. This spells Cost and Aggravation.
In next week’s blog, I will go over how to avoid re-architecture aggravation.
