Ye Olde Landline's Days are Numbered

Amidst the hyper-connected world we live in with all of our cordless phones and smart devices, it almost seems that anyone who still has a wired landline is living out of some sort of museum. As more tech-advanced gadgets replace the systems of yesterday, we’re now figuring out what to do with the old landlines that still exist while the landscape is drastically evolving around them. The fact of the matter is, the landline days are numbered.

The move to migrate communications to an all-IP network from a legacy one is one of the most talked about debates in telecom to date. There are many parties that fall on either side of the argument, but the main pro touted by industry professionals is the hypercompetitive environment an all-IP future holds. With traditional legacy networks, expansion leads to complexity, which then leads to reduced network quality and increased ancillary costs in transmission, equipment rooms, power consumption and human resources. Many seem to misunderstand that this issue is not a left versus right one politically, but rather a future versus past argument on the human level.

AT&T has already initiated plans to ditch their wireline networks and move towards an all IP-based system. The transition would involve a lot more than simply phasing out traditional voice offerings, however, so this jump to all-IP is met with a lot of obstacles.

Then of course there’s some other elements of difficulty. Some newer systems won’t work with medical alert devices, fax machines or home alarms. Federal laws protect those still using copper lines for specific services, so the gray areas just seem grayer.

On the business level, switching to an IP-based communications system is full of benefits. IP telephony technology offers a myriad of significant cost and performance benefits over maintaining a separate network for voice, video, and data. One of the key benefits of IP telephony is enhanced productivity, since it offers a host of applications and devices, enabling employees to carry out their tasks more effectively and efficiently.