In 2025, the current BT telephony network will be switched off disabling all ISDN and PSTN capabilities, and although 2025 may seem like a long way away, starting to think about what you need to do to get prepared for the change is a necessary evil. What your current position is on transitioning will determine how much work needs to be done beforehand to ensure that when the switch happens, you have everything in place for the next generation of telephony services and won’t be left behind in the ISDN graveyard.
The announcement of the apocalypse has been bouncing around for a while now with BT further announcing that they will no longer upgrade or take orders for new installations from the year 2020. This is no soothsayer talk. This is for real! All telephone lines will be eventually replaced by IP voice technology, a solution that has greatly matured over the last 20 years to offer a far more superior service than traditional restrictive fixed lines. This means that all customers - like it or not - need to start thinking about migrating to an IP voice solution.
Although PBX network-based telecoms have escaped the digital transformation black hole, it won’t be for much longer, as the IP light fast approaches at the end of the ISDN tunnel! With a quarter of UK businesses still unaware of the deadline, or even the switch date, stats indicate that the change will affect up to 3.2 million active channels using PSTN/ISDN network infrastructure for voice telephony. Businesses that are not preparing or ready will find themselves flatlining without teleco services and may lose their business numbers all together if processes haven’t been triggered to migrate local exchange numbers to a hosted service provider. Left without, the last thing any business wants to hear is the “Ghost of Christmas Past” smugly whispering, “I told you so!”
Unfortunately, many businesses still judge IP voice as a strange phenomenon and recoil at the thought of its implementation as a malevolent spectre, but deploying a cloud based solution will add scalability to, and future-proof your business by delivering an easy to maintain and customisable system, helping you stretch the capabilities of new-gen voice technology.
No longer will the telekinetic or teleportation movements of persons around the office be seen as Harry Potter wizardry, but colleagues enjoying the freedom of hot-desking. So, get a move on and set your skeletal colleagues free who have been tied to their desks for a thousand years!
Scaremongering and jokes aside, a plan of action should be part of every company’s digital transformation strategy to migrate current services to either a SIP solution or hosted platform to avoid being left screaming without voice connectivity. Planning and accessing to evaluate what the best solution will be to meet your operational requirements is key so, don’t wait until there’s a frenzied attack on service providers to fulfil orders for VoIP solutions at the eleventh hour or go beyond your PBX sell by date! Speaking to consultants and doing a bit of light research will help you immensely in choosing the right solution for your operational ecosystem.
Are you sitting comfortably
Virocom understand that keeping up to speed with the challenges of fast paced technology and keeping your business services running at optimum levels can be tough so, if you want to have a little lie down, chat about your pain and exorcise your business comms demons, get in touch. . . and remember. . .
