A basic phone line remains working in a power cut, so has generally being viewed as more reliable than broadband. However, to mitigate this risk, cloud phone systems can also run via 4G/5G on a mobile phone, and many businesses these day consider 4G/5G backup to their internet connection as essential anyway. As more services are moved to cloud technology, all companies should consider their backup plan when looking at what might happen if their internet goes down or they have a power cut. These days, many would simply work from home and a cloud phone system ensures a reduced risk of downtime because of its flexibility.
Many TSC customers save around 40% to 70% on their current phone services, this is mainly due to hidden pricing increase in their old phone contract and the costs for supporting old onsite technology.
For many businesses there is a significant risk to running their own onsite infrastructure for their phone system. They are vulnerable to power surges and when they fail, they usually need an onsite engineer visit to resolve, which can involve long waiting times. Many are running legacy hardware, which once fails is no longer repairable due to limitations on parts.
The move to cloud technology, like all our other business services, ensures that the technology is managed in datacentres centrally, where the whole environment is kept perfectly optimised and cool, and managed by a permanent team of engineers, so you simply no longer have to worry about it. For businesses the case has already being made, with many choosing to take the jump during lockdown. Those that haven’t are usually stuck in a long term contracts, but the cost savings in comparison to ISDN and a physical phone system are usually significant.
One of the issues many businesses encounter when moving to a cloud phone system is issues with their internal network. Cloud phone systems are very sensitive to networking problems, so switching to the cloud can highlight network issues with switches, or viruses on the network or hardware issues. However these kind of problems are well worth solving! One of the reasons traditional telecoms companies are not pushing cloud services is they know very little about networks, so are unable to solve the issues, whereas cloud providers like TSC are network experts, helping to troubleshoot networking problems.
For home users, it’s all a bit more challenging. While most of us now have mobile phones and a large number would consider not even bothering with a landline number (I chose to ditch mine all together when I switched to SOGEA, as my landline only ever received spam calls) for the elderly and vulnerable it’s a bit more difficult. When switching to VOIP, their current phone may need changing, and they may not even have a broadband service at home. Home alarm systems may need upgrading to work over the internet or 4G instead of using the phone line. The home market is yet to switch to SOGEA due to these issues.
While we all have no choice in the move to SOGEA, the benefits to the overall network will be for everyone in the long term. As the voice services is moved off the network, long term this will ensure faster speeds for all. We no longer question watching movies on our internet, when this first came out many thought this was a crazy idea, yet here we all are with Netflix, amazon, Disney etc. Phones are just the same.
Written on 04/01/2022 by Juliet Moran
As the Technical Director at TelephoneSystems.cloud, I bring over 27 years of extensive experience in cloud technology. As a woman in the tech industry, I am committed to paving the way for the next generation, demonstrating that innovation in technology should be inclusive of both women and men. My goal is to inspire and empower future generations to actively contribute to the advancement of technology regardless of gender.
