The Race to Replace POTS Lines is On, Ooma Podcast

Telecom Reseller / Technology Reseller News

Survey finds 1 in 10 organizations haven’t begun migration process, while POTS lines remain present in companies where migration is underway Migration option can be an upgrade “We found that 90% of enterprise customers are already moving towards some sort of POTS replacement,” says Clinton Fitch of Ooma. “They either have a plan in place or they're doing pilots or something along those lines. What that means, though, is that 10% of those being surveyed had no plan. And it really is now a rush to get it done.” Clinton shares with us the finding of a recent survey they conducted with Foundry. Foundry is the parent company of CIO Magazine. Ooma has been on the frontlines of the migration process for two decades. Today, Ooma offers AirDial, a device that meets the needs of customers with POTS lines in places such as elevators. The traditional connectivity of POTS remains a requirement in these locations, but the intentional sunset of POTS lines means that many organizations are faced with uncharted territory. They must meet regulatory requirements to offer POTS functionality, in a a post-POTS environment. “We're seeing customers that are seeing anywhere from three to 800% bill increases month over month,” adds Clinton. The obligations that governed POTS, are gone or are going. In some cases, organizations have only discovered their immediate need to get on top of migration because their critical POTS lines have simply been shut down. This can now occur without warning or notification. In many localities, a disruption would place the building or facility as being non-compliant. A company retrofitting a building might discover that even occupancy might be held up there’s nothing to replace the previous points that had POTS services. Life-safety systems are covered by regulations – such as NFPA 72 for fire alarms and ASME A17.1 for elevator phones – that have specific requirements for POTS replacement, such as making sure the device uses a private network rather than sending data over the public internet. Not all POTS replacement devices are compliant. We learn that the survey found that people are hoping to not only remain in compliance, and avoid price surges, they also hope to find solutions that integrate with the rest of their technology stack. In this podcast we learn that Ooma AirDial, meets compliance requirements, offers full integration, with an upgrade. “With AirDial, we've built in a lot of technology into this, and we've built in a lot of notifications as well. Customers will know if something's going on with that device, or they know if a device has gone offline, or if it's gone on battery power, if you've lost power, for example, wherever the device sits. But you can also get notifications on if a call happens.” Ooma offers help, advice and resources finding out the status of these needs across the organization. Ooma suggests and can help with an audit of the phone lines, as a first step in mapping out the migration process. Visit www.ooma.com/airdial