Part 1:
The POTS Landscape
What is Copper/POTS?
The traditional Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) is commonly associated with the older Copper Based Telecom infrastructure.
- It is estimated that there are up to 30M Legacy Copper/POTS Lines (USA) still in operation today.
Rising Costs of Legacy Copper/POTS for Safety Phones
In contrast to VoIP cost efficiency, the Copper/POTS service fees have climbed year over year due to rising maintenance overhead and lack of legacy infrastructure knowledge workers, leading to increased line costs.
Telecom operators experience less costs maintaining and focussing on their more recent fiber-based facilities that provide internet, cellular and data networking communication services.
- In certain parts of the country a single POTS line can cost upwards of $150/Month.
- This legacy Copper Infrastructure was treated as essential services and heavily regulated, mandating carriers to maintain and keep legacy POTS services available for customers.
Lifting The Regulatory POTS Mandate
Encumbered by legacy FCC mandates, Carriers found it difficult to compete with traditional copper based Plain old Telephone Services (POTS) and the maintenance overhead associated with these older copper facilities. As a result, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was petitioned to act:
- The FCC has since issued order 19-72A1, mandating that all U.S. POTS lines get replaced with an alternative, freeing Carriers of the previous mandate and burden to maintain and repair their legacy copper infrastructure.
POTS Replacement for Office Phones
Over the past 15 years the industry has aggressively migrated telephony services to Cloud Based Voice-over-IP (VoIP) for office and home telephone services gaining cost savings and more feature rich service offerings.
- Previous VoIP migrations were not focussed on the more difficult to replace lines that we will call “Safety Phones” which can include services for Alarm Panels, Medical Fax, Elevators, Dialup Point-of-Sale, and many other dial-up type applications and sensors.
POTS Affected by Cost Rise & Sunset of Services
Up to 30M Lines Need Replacing (USA)
It is estimated that there are up to 30M Legacy Copper/POTS Lines still in operation today and cost for these legacy POTS lines are increasing as carriers focus on more modern fiber based services.
With RabbitRun POTS over SD-WAN,
You Can Replace:
- Alarm Panels
- Elevator Phones
- Building Access
- Dialup Point-of-Sale
- Medical FAX
- Other Safety Phones
- Data Sensor Modems
- Other Mission Critical Applications
