Outdated and Burdensome...

"Outdated and Burdensome" - when the government refers to a technology like this, you know it’s a bad sign. But that’s what the FCC said last year in regards to analog lines and their related rules. Check it out here:

https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-grants-relief-outdated-burdensome-phone-industry-regulations

But is that really why there is a sudden interest in moving away from copper/analog lines to alternate solutions - be it VOIP providers like Vonage or Verizon One Talk, SIP trunked lines over an ATA from someone like Coredial, or cellular solutions from companies like DataRemote, Telegard, Janus, Marketspark, or the carriers themselves.

The truth is, when it comes to government regulation and forced technology, businesses tend to wait until the last minute, counting on delays, and angered at added costs and complexity of making changes.

What is Driving this Transition?

Well, a few things. The same reasons that tend to drive a lot of technology investments, at least in the wireless space.

Cost:

According to the below article the average POTS business line in the United States costs $66. But “average” doesn’t mean much if a business is paying $100 to $250 a line (We’ve seen it) for multiple lines. 

https://futureofsourcing.com/the-future-of-plain-old-telephone-service-hang-up-or-pay-up

When you can buy a cell phone with unlimited internet for $40/month, and free wifi is ubiquitous, paying $100+ for a 50 year old copper wire that can only transmit analog data is a bit infuriating. With POTS replacement solutions, the typical cost is under $40 per line. Nice ROI.

So companies are looking to minimize spend (think the move to the cloud) analog lines immediately stand out. Compare this to VOIP services for a fraction of this cost, reducing (or eliminating) analog lines can be a huge savings, even when factoring investments in new equipment and installation.

Reliability:

Going back to the “50 year old copper” the next driving factor is reliability. Ask any large business about phone line reliability and they always have a complaint about those troubled sites, where “service goes down every time it rains” - which would be a simple annoyance if these lines were being used to watch Netflix “break out the board games” but in the cases of life safety (elevator, burglar fire alarm and suppression systems) there is a lot of risk (and at risk) in having a failure. 

Redundant Remote Solar Monitoring

This is where the concepts “network diversity, redundancy, dual-path” come in to play. No one wants a single physical point of failure. By moving from analog lines to a cellular solution (with multiple sims/carriers as an option) or a cellular plus wired/wifi (cable or fiber) option, with an embedded battery backup, customers can be confident that communication will remain active, even in the event of storms, blizzards, and other events that might take out a single point of failure (when has a backhoe only torn up one of the phone lines…)

Monitoring is a huge business today. With everything from refrigerators to cars to gym equipment cloud-enabled, IoT-powered, and real time monitored, who wants to wait and find out that a phone line has stopped working picking up the phone? - this isn’t a 1980’s horror movie. Cellular and IP based solutions can provide real-time, proactive alerting and allow for remote maintenance, avoiding the dreaded truck roll. 

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CutPhoneLines

And these truck rolls are now fewer and far between. Check out this situation in the bronx where customers lost phone service for up to a month. Customers everywhere are reporting significantly longer response times for outages and repairs. But there is another truck roll that may never come at all…The two situations driving the fastest “POTS REPLACEMENT” adoption are:

1. Opening a new location and learning POTS service is unavailable, or only available at a tremendous cost and delay. Especially after you already put in your analog alarm system
2. Receiving a letter from the carrier that POTS analog lines are being replaced, and although service will be available (likely fiber with some power added) legacy pricing will not be honored. 

We have seen customers trapped - customers including a casino, a hospital chain, a local jail (definitely want to make sure the security system is working there) and many retail chains trying to expand despite ever decreasing margins.

So to Recap:

The above concerns have formed 'perfect storm' conditions for POTS replacement to be finally taken seriously. With estimates that between 30 million and 60 million lines need to be replaced over the next few years, this is becoming big business. It’s an early, complicated business, with a lot of moving parts (connectivity, installation, configuration, code adherence) so there are not as many players as say, the 4G router space, but that will surely change.

So what should you look for in a POTS replacement solution?

1. Carrier certification
2. UL Listing
3. Code adherence
4. Battery backup
5. Redundant pathways
6. 24/7 support & Monitoring
7. Experienced Installation services
8. Support for legacy hardware
9. Time in market and total devices deployed

I have been working on LTE Powered, IP-based POTS replacement solutions for the last several years, and here at CTS Mobility it is my primary focus - and the fastest growing business I have encountered in 11 years of working as a carrier partner. I’ve worked with most of the available devices and solutions and we have selected a few best in class solutions that exceed our customer’s exacting standards. 

If you are in the telco industry, I’d be happy to talk to you more about how you can educate your customers on these solutions and opportunities. If you are a business, medium, large or small, I’d love to help take a look at your current analog/pots infrastructure and perform a cost benefit analysis to see how we can help you save some money while upgrading your infrastructure. 

Let me know in the comments any (non-cooking related) POTS problems you have encountered or any success stories. 

#FCC #POTSREPLACEMENT #POTS #DATARREMOTE #VERIZON

Pete Dunn is has been consulting in the IoT space for over 10 years. He was a co-founder at Wyless Connect (before it was acquired by Kore) and has built out router programs at numerous other companies including ORBCOMM. Pete has recently joined forces with CTS Mobility to expand their router business and manage their POTS replacement business, one of their fastest growing solutions.