We received a notice from one of our POTS line consolidators this week.B I found it pretty interesting and thought you might too!
It starts like this:
b Itb s no secret that the RBOC (Regional Bell Operating Company) POTS (plain old telephone service) line carriers that provide the worldb s best analog circuits for fax lines, modem lines, alarm lines and the like have a tendency to change their prices with fairly short notice.b
We can certainly agree.
In fact, I am helping one of our customers deal with this issue right now.B AT&T gave them notice (in the fine print, of course) that their contract was expiring the following month.B No detail, no disclosure of what the new cost would be.B The next monthb s invoice was b shockingb .B While we might anticipate a 10 to 20 percent increase, the cost went up a whopping 466 percent.B You got that right b 466%!
So, the secret they felt it necessary to reveal is that some consolidators have been caught by surprise by this and have quickly moved their customers to a CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier) to manage the cost without providing any notice to their customers.
In general, thatb s not a problem.B We havenb t found a CLECb s POTS lines to be any less reliable than the RBOCb s.B The problem is that the cutover can cause a disruption of service that can catch YOU by surprise.
We take the reliability of POTS lines for granted much of the time.B We do have a customer that runs a national restaurant chain that has problems with their POTS lines from time to time.B This is almost always the result of some damage inside the restaurant.B Rarely do we find that the carrierb s service is actually down.
What would I like to leave you with?B When youb re considering consolidation of your POTS lines (or any other telecommunications service for that matter), the company you partner with is just that b a partner.B You need to make sure that partnering with the company will make your life easier.B We have these discussions with customers every day.B Let us know if youb re ready to start the discussion for your business.
Technology is changing even more rapidly than the “light speed” we’ve become accustomed to. B If you get too far behind it gets more and more difficult to catch up. B Go To Telecom can help you stay ahead of the learning curve.
