End of ISDN

We are now only 3 years away from the turn-off of analogue services such as ISDN.??Other countries, such as Germany, have already gone down that route,??One of the issues holding us back is our broadband infrastructure.??I have seen several companies moved away by suppliers from ISDN then having untold issues with the replacement service as there was no fibre broadband of any sort.??One case ended up in court where I was an expert witness,??The customer won.?

I expect a lot of suppliers to start targeting ISDN customers (there remains several million lines in the UK) throughout this year with dire apocalyptic warnings to encourage them to move,??Before you sign any paperwork there are a number of things to consider as well as is my broadband good enough.??Many devices potentially will be affected such as alarms, EPOS machines, door entry systems, CCTV, and faxes.

Firstly do I want to scrap my phone system???

Most phone systems sold in the last 5 or 6 years are capable of working with SIP.??This is obviously cheaper for you, but less revenue to the supplier. Wonder why many providers are pushing companies into migrating fully to the cloud???But if you don’t need any new functionality and it works for you, this may be the best option.??

Some manufacturers, such as Panasonic, are pulling out of the market but the major providers will continue to support their platforms for many years to come.??So check out any claims made to you before signing.

Be careful with leases

If you are going to move to the cloud there are a lot of dodgy suppliers selling long term deals based around leasing the software.?They should be avoided at all costs.??A normal cloud contract would be 2 or 3 years at most.??Apart from phones if you still want them nothing should be on a lease.??The lease is solely to the benefit of the supplier so they can get paid in advance for what is a pay as you go model.??It also means if there are issues you have to deal with two parties to resolve them.??Make sure you get plenty of comparisons before signing and check what happens to the price over time as many have unclear introductory pricing.

Collaboration?

With many of us having got used to using Teams and Zoom over the past few years it is also worth considering if you want to add collaboration to your phone system.?If so do you want the phone system to do it, or do you want to integrate with Teams/Zoom or go the full hog and move completely to products such as Teams for everyone.??No one approach suits everyone so make sure you compare the alternatives.

Other integrations

Another trend, partly driven by home working, was an increase in integrating customer focused systems with phone communications and by that I don’t mean large call centres.?Giving people on the phone linked access to customer information based on linking calling numbers has seen a large growth.?Whilst most providers integrate with the more common systems such as salesforce and dynamics they do it in different ways and to different levels.?If you have an industry specific solution then even if you don’t want to do it now check the supplier can do it should you require it during your contract with them.

Finally some solutions allow you to simply extend collaboration to customers, partners even, enabling them to call you from your website.?So before you sign anything, think about what you want to achieve and don’t sign with the first company to contact you about the “imminent” demise of ISDN.?