California-based Ooma has seen a lot of changes to the POTS that have major implications for vendors and customers, according to Chris Burgy, Vice President Corporate Development at Ooma.
Giving a stark example, Burgy says:
“Many folks are still unaware that the network will get turned off: the wheels are in motion on this.”
- Burgy was speaking to UC Today ahead of UC Summit 2023, which takes place between Monday, January 23, running until Friday, January 27 – click here to register now
In the 10-minute exclusive UC Trends video, Burgy speaks expertly about the changes that have affected POTS or the plain old telephone service in the States, and explains what’s been happening behind the scenes with the Federal Communications Commission; he says: “The copper network or POTS has been around for a very, very long time. The FCC issued some orders back in 2019 that set this all in motion, and two key things came out of that order.
Burgy adds: “The first is it allows the incumbent carriers in the US to turn off the copper network. So this was regulated before to provide that service, and they have a vested interest in doing so. A lot of that infrastructure is ancient, it’s expensive to maintain, and the technicians that work on it have been retiring over the last ten years.
Burgy goes on to reveal that the carriers currently have a financial advantage, and many using such less-regulated lines have seen their bills quadruple; he continues: “More importantly, the second thing, is that they issued in that order what’s called forbearance, so the pricing on these unbundled network elements was regulated before, but now the forbearance allows the incumbent care carriers to charge whatever they want for pot slides.”
- Pre-register for a headstart on 2023 for our UC Trends series with award-winning vendors and gain access to the UC Summit Big Updates and more exclusive product roadmaps
As well as discussing Burgy’s career and UC trends for 2023, the video outlines how organisations survive the “copper sunset” of plain old telephone service, giving companies a heads-up on preparing for coming network changes.
Burgy outlines the most essential element; he states: “We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the cost of pots lines into organizations around the country, and the key issue here for a lot of organizations is that by and large, the simple devices to migrate away from those old copper lines have been migrated to UCaaS solutions.”
Burgy offers some advice to organisations and concludes: “One of the first steps is conducting an inventory and an assessment of what you have in your environment that’s still relying on these devices, and the nature of all the devices that are connected.
“Believe it or not we still see customers that are using pots lines as a regular phone or they have IP-Centrics still — for whatever reason — or on-premise PBX systems that can’t use SIP (Session Initiation Protocol telephony), so getting a good handle on that will determine a path forward on it.”
