If you’re still using traditional business phone systems, understanding POTS phone line pricing has never been more important.
What is a POTS Line?
Plain Old Telephone Services (POTS) may still be used in your business today, even if you’re unaware of it. POTS lines are the traditional analog phone services that nearly all companies utilized in the past. These are old-fashioned copper wires that connect to standard telephones, fax, DSLs, and alarms.
These lines provide connectivity and power to your telephone service providers central switching system. The term is often grouped interchangeably with public switched telephone networks (PSTN) in modern businesses.
There are three key reasons that POTS phone line pricing is rising:
- POTS lines use copper, an outdated material
- Digital innovation has made POTS lines obsolete
- It’s costly for telecom companies to support POTS lines
Why is POTS Phone Line Pricing Changing?
The analog equipment that underpins POTS lines is now outdated. Copper is an aged material, is expensive to replace, and increasingly difficult to acquire. That’s why telecom companies have rapidly reduced support for analog infrastructure as communication needs have evolved.
The digital transmission of voice, video, and data has spurred rapid innovation of other services, such as integrated services digital network (ISDN) lines. Also initiatives like ‘the great PSTN switch-off’ target ending PSTN lines by 2030. POTS lines included.
Because of this, setting up POTS line infrastructure is now a costly business. Installing and maintaining infrastructure that isn’t the industry standard anymore is burdensome for telecom companies. And alternatives like Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) run at a much lower cost. It’s never been more urgent for modern enterprises to reassess their telecom strategies if they don’t want these costs to grow.
How to Manage Rising POTS Phone Line Pricing
It’s easy for POTS phone line infrastructure to sit unnoticed in your telecom inventory. Your internal teams might not have the time to find and remove lines that are no longer needed or make the transition to new technology.
Here are three key ways to better manage growing POTS phone line pricing and reduce costs for your enterprise.
1. Improve Your Telecom Inventory Management
Efficient telecom inventory management has benefits that extend far beyond identifying POTS lines. When done well, it can help you accurately track, manage, and report on all software and IT assets in your business. This includes fixed and mobile telecom assets.
A telecom inventory management can manage this for you. You may still be paying for POTS lines you don’t use but are still being recorded as active. This can go unnoticed, especially in large telecom environments. Your chosen provider can drill down into the details of your POTS lines, including vendor, location, circuit use, and connection status. This gives you in-depth visibility across your inventory data.
2. Replace Unneeded POTS Lines
Now you have visibility of your POTS lines, you can replace the infrastructure with cost-effective alternatives. You should remove phone lines that have limited usage or are no longer needed. By keeping your business up to date with the latest technology, or implementing more efficient alternatives, you’ll reduce costs in the long term.
However, replacing outdated equipment on a large scale is a vast task. You’ll need to manage the logistics of removing the old equipment, sourcing new equipment, and rolling it out across your organization. That’s enough to give any internal team a headache. Luckily, a telecom expense management provider can handle this, known as mobile lifecycle management, for you. They can manage the entire telecom lifecycle of sourcing, purchasing, staging, deployment, and retirement. This makes the process more straightforward for your teams.
3. Keep Track of Your Bills
Your transition from POTS phone lines might not be a cut and dry process. You might need to keep existing infrastructure in certain locations or might not be able to switch to alternatives all at once. Whatever your circumstances, it’s vital to ensure your POTS phone line pricing doesn’t climb to inefficient costs.
To overcome this, conduct an audit of your telecom bills to understand exactly what you’re paying. Where you can, negotiate with your telecom providers to get a better deal from your POTS phone line pricing. If your internal teams need extra support, an experienced telecom contract management partner can advise and support you through this process.
Say Goodbye to Rising POTS Phone Line Pricing
Your POTS phone lining pricing doesn’t have to be a rising cost that you begrudgingly pay. There are many ways to make your infrastructure more cost-effective, especially as technology innovation creates lower-priced alternatives.
