What’s IP-based, cost efficient and rapidly replacing Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) infrastructure? That would be 4G LTE. Over the past few years, many organizations are moving towards deploying newer technologies like 4G LTE instead of legacy POTS lines to use for Out-of-Band (OOB) connectivity or site backup. Opengear has been on the front of the technology wave, providing embedded cellular as part of our Out-of-Band offering since 2010. We understand the ins and outs of this technology boom- like how LTE allows for Smart Out-of-Band™ (Smart OOB) to be easily implemented into any infrastructure with its reliable, fast and secure failover for wireless connections.
Remember the 80’s and 90’s and those sweet sounds of modems training up to provide blazing fast connections of 38400 Baud? Now do you remember the disconnects during downloads, the no answers and the busy signals? These memories are starting to quickly become not so fond. Do you want to run your OOB emergency access to infrastructure like this? Most would say no. The truth is carriers want to move away from POTS due to the cost of maintaining copper lines. This cost is passed on to you if you happen to be in an area where you can still get a POTS line. Most office phone connections today are now VOIP and running POTS over VOIP can be challenging as well. All of the these have contributed to the decline of POTS usage, in fact, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is vying for POTS lines to transition to wireless connectivity – which most already seem to be doing. The National Health Center has projected that only 6% of the population are actually using POTS lines.1
Opengear has made the most dependable console server which can be seen within the features of each device. Our console servers enable uninterrupted availability for remote networks utilizing 4G LTE for either OOB needs or failover needs and remediates network issues remotely by providing a cellular backup to small remote sites. Need more reasons to switch to cellular?
Don’t take our word for it, reach out to your carrier of choice and ask them about their Machine 2 Machine plans for IoT devices. If you do plan on using Opengear as a failover connection, you will need to choose a data rate plan accordingly because there is more data than just for OOB usage.
Make your job easier. Don’t rely on antiquated modems and traditional lines as your troubleshoot, backup connection. Upgrade yourself to Opengear’s OOB and failover to increase your network’s resiliency using our embedded cellular technology. This means better availability, reliability, dependability monitoring and performance – all at a fraction of the cost of a POTS line connection.
To learn more about Smart Out-of-Band and F2C by Opengear, please watch our demo video.
1 https://www.compuvoip.com/the-end-of-the-pstn-2/
2 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/10/08/we-spend-billions-a-year-maintaining-phone-lines-almost-nobody-depends-on-should-we-get-rid-of-them/?utm_term=.420cc5dae515