Energy efficiency is the ability to use less energy to accomplish a task. Buildings that are efficient use less energy to operate and light spaces, which save money and help the environment. Many businesses are rushing to migrate their copper POTS lines to VoIP or cellular. The move can be fast, easy and reduce telephony costs. But moving mission-critical devices off analog lines requires a more thoughtful approach.
1. Cost Savings
Many organizations still use copper lines for mission-critical applications like fire alarms, elevator voice circuits, fax machines and security gates. These devices need redundancy and often require unique communication protocols incompatible with unified communication solutions.
This is why facility directors and IT teams are looking to move these devices off analog copper wires to modern solutions that can withstand natural disasters, meet compliance requirements (including UL 864 certification) and offer a cost-effective approach. A POTS replacement solution replaces your hardline connections with a router connecting to your VoIP or cellular network.
These devices are more reliable, less expensive and can be centrally managed, so invoicing is streamlined for multiple locations. In addition, the newer solution may allow you to save up to 40% in phone line costs.
This could result in significant cost savings for your organization. Energy efficiency also benefits our planet, as fewer resources are used to generate electricity which helps reduce stress on the U.S. electric grid and prevents power disruptions.
2. Redundancy
As carriers decommission copper POTS lines, businesses must have an alternative solution to support mission-critical services like fire alarms, security systems, elevator emergency phones, fax and more. A cellular-based solution offers everything that traditional copper POTS lines could do and more and is more resilient against outages caused by power failures or internet disruptions.
Energy efficiency improvements also help to reduce the amount of electricity that buildings consume at a given time, which minimizes stress on the U.S. electric grid and reduces the amount of fossil fuels used, which helps prevent climate change.
This reduction in demand lowers energy costs, decreases emissions of greenhouse gases and pollutants that contribute to air quality problems, and helps businesses reduce their environmental impact. While VOIP solutions provide a “quasi” POTS replacement, they can’t meet the needs of specialty lines such as fire and security alarms and elevator voice circuits that must remain up and running at all times.
Any solution chosen must be NFPA 72 compliant with loop start telephone circuits, proactive support and 8 hours of backup power. Fortunately, Ares is one of the few cellular-based POTS transformation systems that can do all this and more, providing an incredibly reliable and cost-effective alternative to copper.
3. Enhanced Mobility
In addition to cost savings, energy efficiency reduces carbon emissions, which reduces environmental pollution. This benefits communities in marginalized neighborhoods disproportionately affected by air quality issues. Similarly, energy-efficient buildings consume less electricity and load less on the U.S. electric grid, minimizing power disruptions and reducing the risk of blackouts in vulnerable areas.
Copper POTS lines are expensive and deteriorating, and the major carriers have started to decommission them in favor of fiber and wireless solutions. The move to digital networks offers several advantages over traditional analog telephone lines, including lower costs, improved reliability, and increased flexibility.
For mission-critical applications like fire alarms, blue light phones and elevator line verification (a requirement of safety codes such as NFPA 72 and ASME 17.1), the ability to run on a cellular network is key to compliance. Traditional POTS lines are difficult to build redundancy into. However, a cellular-based solution makes it easy for the AHJ to verify that the emergency device is still operational in the event of a failure.
4. Enhanced Security
Many emergency systems, such as fire alarms and elevator emergency phones, require a hardwired copper POTS line. When these lines fail, it can cause significant problems in an emergency when seconds count, and you need to know that everything is working as it should be. Thankfully, solutions are available that can help replace these old copper lines.
These solutions convert analog POTS lines into wireless and cellular signals. This allows you to build redundancy into your life safety lines and ensure they work even if the copper line fails. These solutions are more reliable than traditional analog lines, which means you can depend on your emergency systems to function in an emergency. They also allow you to monitor your plans to ensure they work as expected.
This level of monitoring can also improve energy efficiency by making it possible to identify when people are leaving a room, which will help reduce unnecessary energy use. The best POTS solution for your business depends on the unique needs of your systems. Different industries have varying requirements for how they communicate and what kind of redundancy is required.
