In the age of latest technology, fiber connectivity, and wireless communication, most people use latest phone line systems for their business. Still, many people have been using traditional phone line systems such as POTS nowadays. But POTS users often face overcharging problems. In this blog, our technical expert will show you how to reduce the cost of POTS lines and fix the overcharging issues.
POTS stands for Plain Old Telephone Service. A POTS line is a business phone line. POTS lines are traditional analog phone service businesses use for voice, fax, DSL and alarm lines. A POTS line can cost anywhere from 20 to 60 dollars per month. This analog phone systems are costlier if we do comparison between analog phone services vs VoIP services. Which is why VoIP is the most popular option nowadays.
Generally, a POTS line can cost anywhere from 20 to 60 dollars per month. Business phone lines are the dumping grounds for tacked on fees. A $40 a month business line typically carries another $10 in fees and surcharges. That’s a 25% markup, and that’s not counting sales tax or subsidy charges.
It’s easy for small businesses to turn their focus away from POTS because it seems to be a low cost service, especially compared to a MPLS network or a GigE internet connection, but a large corporation could be spending thousands of dollars a month for their inventory of POTS lines.
Modem lines are a thing of the past. Fax lines are headed in the same direction. Alarm lines can be replaced with wireless connections that carry fewer fees and surcharges. Inventory your POTS lines and eliminate the lines that you no longer need. It will also help you to reduce your corporate wireless costs.
If the majority of your POTS lines are with the same incumbent phone company, contact your account rep and inquire about volume pricing. If your carrier rep claims that bulk pricing doesn’t exist, work through a telecom consultant who has an agency relationship with that carrier. Telecom consultants act as customer advocates and have to prove their value. If volume pricing is available, a telecom consultant will make you aware of it.
If you have a number of POTS lines at any given location, it might pay to convert them to PRI. PRI offers 23 channels, which can be shared by a number of employees. For example, 40 POTS lines could cost $2000 a month. 40 employees could share one PRI, which would cost about $500 a month. POTS lines could also be converted to SIP. SIP stands for Session Initiation Protocol. SIP trunks are voice paths over the internet and they’re less expensive than POTS lines and carry fewer taxes and surcharges.
If you are a large, multi-location company and you have hundreds of POTS lines spread out across the country, supplied and billed by different carriers, POTS consolidation is something you should consider. POTS aggregators can provide one bill and one point of contact for your entire POTS inventory. This can greatly reduce the administrative costs related to the service.
If you’re using POTS as your business phone line these tips might help you to reduce your cost to a greater extent. If you’re using other telecom services you can go through these telecom cost reduction strategies.
If you would like help inventorying, auditing, managing, and lowering the cost of your Business Phone Line inventory, contact CarrierBid today.
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