In 2019 the FCC mandated that most analog lines, also known as plain old telephone service (POTS) lines, should transition to a digital alternative by August 2022. There were three tenants to this mandate:
- All POTS lines would be replaced with an alternate form of communications technology, such as wireless or fiber optic lines.
- Carriers were required to properly maintain the existing POTS lines in order to maintain their efficiency.
- Copper lines were de-regulated, allowing suppliers to phase out support for these lines while replacing the infrastructure with modern technologies.
The Impact of Mandating Digital Solutions
We interviewed the Vice President of Sales and Engineering at Broadvoice, Jason Smith, for his insights into how the mandate has affected the telecommunications industry.
Jason claims that the mandated switch to digital has had a “very positive” impact on consumers and carriers. “Companies have been very open to it, especially with the services we provide [like] hosted telephony, where all your intelligence is in the cloud. It means consumers only need data connectivity and some sort of internet access to get those services.”
By transitioning to digital solutions, companies have been able to reduce staffing — therefore freeing up budgeting resources — because there is no longer a need to have the traditional PBX system on-site with an IT person to manage it. Consumers have also benefited from increased efficiency and productivity because of the enterprise-class features that come with these digital technologies.
Jason also discussed how the mandate dismantled the existing monopoly within telecommunications and offered customers flexible pricing. “Before, you were subject to whatever the main guys had set the price at. As people started moving away from those analog services, it allowed multiple carriers to pop up, allowing a price-competitive situation. It opened the door for a lot of other providers like us to be in the game.”
The Broadvoice Difference
What sets Broadvoice apart from the thousands of hosted voice carriers is how we take care of our clients. We are proud to have the best customer service in the business: the Broadvoice Success Program.
Our customer support starts early in the process. Our sales teams use an in-depth discovery process to determine the needs of each client and the functionalities that will suit them best. Jason described the mindset behind this process, “You have to get in there and understand [your client] — understand what their network looks like, how many locations they have, how many users … start identifying how they communicate, what their call flow looks like, are they a single location, do they have a receptionist? It’s doing a deep-dive discovery, understanding what their environment looks like and helping them understand where we can help them out.”
Once customers are onboarded to our platform, we have a dedicated team of support specialists who help them understand each feature, how it works, and how it can improve their day-to-day business and workflow. Jason briefly described the role of our support specialists, “They understand how to get someone moved on to the system, how to train them on it, and how to move them forward and introduce them to new feature functionality.”
But the continuation of care doesn’t stop there. “We follow up. We have you trained on it, so we are going to follow up and make sure that you’re using all the features to the best of your abilities and what suits your needs.”
Carriers like AT&T and Sprint have hosted services and hosted voice services, but they lack a team of experts who know the functionalities inside and out. Jason said, “We’ve got a whole staff of experts that know the platform and can make it do whatever you want it to do, so there’s a huge advantage. With our propriety platforms, we can build anything we want for [our clients]. The sky is the limit. We listen to our clients about what their wants and needs are.”
Conclusion
With our cloud based UCaaS and CCaaS solutions, our legendary customer service teams, and our industry experts, we can help your business transition from analog to digital while improving communications and collaboration.
Ready to make the transition from analog to digital? Schedule a demo to learn more.
