If there were anything in today’s tech that was more hyped than “the end of landlines”, the hyperbole would reach the next solar system. Every telecom provider has progressively increased the apocalyptic tone of their spiel to make you believe in the imminence and immanence of the switch-off.
Nothing is further from the truth. There is an obligation, enshrined in UK law, that secures the existence of your telephone line for the foreseeable future. What will change is the way the service is delivered: to know what benefits you will receive and to understand how this can help you or your business, keep reading.
This is how your telephone line works now, in very simple terms: the dial tone you hear in your handset when you take it off the cradle is an analogue audio signal created at your local exchange by electronic equipment and injected into the wires that lead to your home. The tones that you hear when you press the buttons to dial a number are analogue audio signals created by your handset. Your voice is an analogue audio signal that runs on the wires that connect your telephone with your exchange, gets converted into another type of signal to be sent to the other exchange, and then is converted back into normal electrical signals and delivered to your caller’s telephone.
Basically, everything that happens during a telephone call is a clever combination of analogue sounds, all created by electronics at the exchange or in the handset: the only “digital” portion of the conversation is between the telephone exchanges.
The future of the home telephone looks very similar. Your phone will continue to work as before, but the conversion between analogue and digital will happen in our homes, not at the exchange. Your home will be fitted with a device where the engineer will connect your household wiring at one end and the physical support that delivers your broadband at the other end. It could be your traditional copper wires or a fibre optic cable: it doesn’t matter.
Your beloved handsets will continue to operate as before. The same dial tone and the same buttons to press. With the difference that, thanks to the better quality of the service your call runs upon, the clarity of the voice will be superior and many of the additional services that you might be charged for now (Caller ID, Voicemail, Call Waiting, etc) will be delivered as standard.
In a nutshell, a non-event mostly with upsides. It will happen, whether you ask for it or not: all you can do is decide to make the jump sooner, avoid the usual last-minute rush and fully embrace the new possibilities offered by this new technology. If you wait until the last minute, you will get a basic, barebone service. By acting sooner, you can decide at what level of cost, performance and service you are happy with.
And here is the added value of working with us for your telecoms: we have everything ready for you right now, we know what is available right now and (most importantly!) what will be available later, and already know what you need!
Do you have remote workers, part-timers or flexi-hours staff members? How convenient would be for your business to support the upgrade of their home systems and offer them to make and receive business calls on their home phone (or a dedicated handset) when they are working remotely? How easy would be for you if they could access your internal office resources from their home in full security?
With the same broadband and digital phone services that you use in your office, your remote staff can be seamlessly integrated into your office network and telephone calls for maximum security and productivity, and this is available right now.
Please get in contact with us to know more.