Replacing POTS Lines in blue light emergency systems

Solution: POTS Link | Industry: Public Safety | Use Case: Blue light emergency systems

Background & Challenges

FCC’s Mandatory Sunset

August 2, 2022, was the deadline set by the FCC in which connectivity providers no longer required to support copper POTS lines. As this date has already passed, the phase-out of existing lines is now solely in the hands of the provider.

These providers each have their own incentive to phase out lines, which will likely show in:

Rising Costs

The monthly cost of maintaining copper POTS lines is continually rising with very little reliable support from service providers. Replacing your POTS system is a modern, secure, and proven way to save, receive better support, and future-proof your technology.

Currently, it costs anywhere between $50-$100 every month to maintain just one POTS line used in a blue light emergency system. Organizations with multiple blue light stations know that this expense multiply across their locations.

Solution

Benefits

Cloud Management

A major benefit of switching to a modern POTS Replacement Solution is that the gives you access to a Network Operations Center (NOC) that utilizes a cloud management platform for better visibility and monitoring. This NOC in conjunction with the platform delivers the management tools and dashboard controls needed to view systems remotely from anywhere since it remains always connected. Additionally, instant notifications via text or email alerts can be assigned which enables alerts based on necessary alerting protocols. User management is also available as an added layer of security and protection. For example, by setting up user accounts, the RTech NOC view dashboards and receive alerts securely.

Keep Existing Infrastructure

When looking at a modern solution, there are several different routes that any given solution can take. Some solutions require removing the existing lines, which can be a challenge for locations that are on a time crunch or feature challenging infrastructure. Other solutions take a more ‘plug and play’ approach by adding a device to the access line of each individual blue light unit. While this method solves the time crunch and is minimally invasive, hardware costs can quickly rise and signal strength is going to vary wildly by location and building material. The last solution takes the ‘plug and play’ approach and improves on it. This has the solution connect to the network’s existing 66 block (“on the way out the door”), giving you a fast and reliable LTE connection using your existing infrastructure and hardware.

Savings

On average, RTech customers can expect a 20% – 50% savings per month after switching to POTS Link. Providers are continuously marking up prices as they seek to force customers off traditional copper lines, meaning the cost disparity between POTS Link and traditional lines will only continue to grow.

Support

Here at RTech Solutions, we have 3 main channels of remote visibility that we use to identify, fix, and solve any potential issues before they become a problem. First, we’ll log into the router contained within our solution to view system traffic and look for anything out of place. Second, we plug into your elevator’s phone line data to check signal health. Lastly, if you’re using RTech Data, we can log into the Cloud Data Platform to look at the path that your data is taking to identify any potential roadblocks there. The best part is that this can be accomplished remotely, often before you even realize there was even a potential issue in the first place.