It is the late 1990s, and you rush home after work, because you have been waiting for a very important personal phone call, and today is the day you get it. You sit there, waiting patiently, wondering why the phone is not ringing. You check the handset and listen for a dial-tone just to make sure that the phone line is working fine. What you hear instead of the dial-tone is a set of modem tones and beeps. Your son is connected to the internet and has been using your phone line to download music files – almost one hour for 3 songs, but well worth it in his eyes. You tell him to get off the internet to free up the phone line, and he does, and you decide to make that phone call instead. In the middle of the call, you hear a handset pick up, and numbers being dialed. It’s your daughter trying to use the line. This was the world we lived in, back in the 1990s – a world in which phone lines were our main gateway for communication.
Fast-forward to 2023. Statistically speaking, chances are you don’t even have a phone line in your house, almost everyone in your household has their own mobile device, and dial-up internet is not even a concept that you care to remember, as high-speed internet is readily available at any time. The world has evolved. Technology has evolved, yet for some reason, the use of landlines is still something we discuss today.
POTS is Dying, but Not Gone
Based on the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)’s 2022 biannual National Health Interview Survey of 15,000 U.S. households, 70.7% of American households were considered “cellular phone only.” Considering that those who answer these types of surveys may not make a clear distinction between actual POTS or a VoIP system that provides a similar user experience, the percentage is likely a lot higher.
It is easy to understand how the residential space has shifted away from traditional POTS connections in favor of newer technology. The proliferation of cellular adoption and the increased dependence on internet-based systems has drastically decreased the demand for traditional landlines in the residential space.
While one would expect the commercial landscape to fare similarly, statistics are not as easy to come by for that segment. The reliance on POTS connectivity – particularly in the life safety (commercial fire) space – is still very much prevalent, but conditions are changing. Although not as organically as with the residential space, the commercial world is turning away from POTS, driven by the increasing unreliability of the POTS connections it so desperately hangs on to, and the availability of better, more affordable options.
That said, these conditions have been around for quite some time. What is different now? What will be the major catalyst that will finally push POTS out of the life safety monitoring world?
As cynical as the answer may sound, the reason why the need to replace phone lines in the intrusion and life safety monitoring industry is ramping up comes down to money. Landlines have been getting progressively worse for quite some time, and although it has been an inconvenience resulting in false and delayed alarms, it has not resulted in the call to arms against the use of POTS that one would expect.
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