First reported by Channel Futures Herecorporate and residential customers are seeing a steady stream of price hikes and service outages as Local Exchange Carriers (ILECs) make a « backward retreat » from the support and offering of analog circuit technology, such as the plain old telephone service (POTS), copper-based services POTS and time division multiplexing (TDM).
Technology consultants say they have seen old telephone service (POTS) and time division multiplexing (TDM) rates rise dramatically on existing customer contracts. In one case, the local exchange carrier increased all corporate landlines to more than $1000 a month for a POTS customer, and other customers are reporting a 300-500% hike on their TDM and POTS services. Alternatively, carriers are discontinuing services altogether rather than raising prices.
Bary Bazen, founder and president of Profit Advisory Groupit said rate hikes and service disruption were « becoming very common among carriers. »
“Customers regularly get POTS notifications saying, ‘Hey, we’re going out of copper service at your rate center. You have 90 days to move the service or lose the number,’” Bazen said Channel futures.
Why are Local Exchange Carriers (ILEC) raising prices?
Simply put, it’s too expensive to maintain an older infrastructure. Before the VoIP revolution, there were maybe 1,000 telephone customers on five miles of copper wiring, but nowadays you may have 75 customers on that same copper, which still needs to be maintained and repaired, and you still have to pay the technicians to do it SO.
What is the alternative to increasing prices or deactivating the service?
Interested customers are moving their POTS/landline service to SIP trunks. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a more dynamic form of voice over IP, offering greater reliability than typical VOIP calls, while providing significant cost savings for end users. Because SIP uses your existing bandwidth for connectivity, the cost is much, much lower than POTS lines, even before the recent price hikes. Customers typically experience a 40-60% cost reduction when comparing POTS lines to SIP trunks. SIP trunks are also easily scalable, so companies can scale the number of phone « lines » up or down rather quickly and typically don’t require a technical site visit.
Some older business phone systems may support SIP trunks using a gateway. We’ve seen success with using gateways, but we’ve also seen call quality issues arise, so it’s always advisable to use a technology that’s similar in scope (for example, SIP trunks with a VoIP phone system).
Not only is SIP an affordable alternative to landline service, but so is its counterpart: VoIP business phone systems or cloud-based phone systems. Business phone systems aren’t an expensive investment like they used to be. Now you pay a small monthly fee for both your phone service and phone system while receiving more features, failover and business continuity attributes, and automatic security software updates.
What about my special lines which are not recommended for SIP (Ex-Fire, Elevators, Alarm Lines)?
Plain Old Telephone (POTs) lines including fire, elevator, fax and alarm lines.
ACC Telecom offers AReS™, an enterprise-grade custom router-based solution for the replacement of specialty lines. Each router is custom programmed for the specific special line to be replaced, for example, fire alarm lines require a different configuration than elevator lines.
AReS™ analog replacement hardware compliance includes:
- FCC approved life safety connection
- HIPAA
- NFPA Model 72 (National Fire Protection Association standards)
- MFVN (Managed Facility Based Voice Network)
AReS™ Analog Hardware Replacement Service and Support includes:
- Lifetime warranty and support
- 24-hour battery backup with optional failover, Wi-Fi and QoS
- Continuous monitoring and technical support
- Enterprise-class Cradlepoint LTE/4G/5G router options
- Dual SIM from Cat 4 to Cat 18
- Up to 8 FXS (analog) ports.
- Advanced routing capabilities
- Cloud Management Portal
ACC Telecom has been a leader in telecommunications for over 40 years. Contact us today to schedule a free consultation regarding your options.
This article was posted on Thursday, March 16, 2023 at 3:45pm. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
