by Rich Moncure

I’m sure I will sound old and salty with this blog, but allow me to back up my TITLE statement.  At this very moment, I am on hold with my carrier due to my T-1 service being down that provides Internet and carries some of our voice traffic.  My “on premises” phone system is a reliable “analog phone lines” system, installed in 2005.  It has never failed.  It is fed by two carriers.

One of the carriers delivers T-1 to us, with several channels of that T-1 providing voice service that rides their Hosted IP backbone.  The other carrier delivers a few analog good ole phone lines to us (POTS).  So our phone system is fed by two sources.  In the ten years I have had this arrangement,  the T-1 and associated voice services have gone done on average 3-4 times per year, typically for 3-4 hours per occasion.  On one occasion, it was down for a full day.  The analog lines have not faltered once (we also use them daily for various purposes) in 10 years.

In the event of trouble on our T-1, we have our primary phone numbers call forwarded to our reliable analog phone lines until T-1 service is restored.   Now of course, there are a variety of other disaster recovery and forwarding schemes that a VoIP and IP Hosting company can offer that may provide forwarding calls to mobile units or other endpoints.  But in our experience, nothing is more reliable than the good old analog POTS line.  If you want to ensure that you can create a solid disaster recovery solution, analog is the most reliable solution we have found.  As I conclude this blog, I am still on hold with my carrier.

By the way, I reached my carrier by using an analog line.

Rich Moncure

Rich is the President of On Hold Marketing, a marketing focused audio studio helping businesses and practices take advantage of their telephone system’s On Hold capabilities. Prior to On Hold Marketing, Rich spent 20 years in telecommunications working for such giants as Williams Communications, NextiraOne, Bell Atlantic and Nortel Networks.