I am not talking about the daily failure of your cell phone not having an adequate signal, or the battery dying and not having a way to recharge it. Or losing or drowning your micro toy mobile unit. I am talking about your business phone system. Yes. The one like your grandfather used, the one with wires, and copper lines, and the one we have all taken for granted over the last hundred years. The phone system you have moved from carrier to carrier chasing savings and features that would allow you to gain competitive advantages and make your business life easier.

You now struggle with the fear of what happens if it goes down again and you lose your connection to your marketplace. Over the past decade we have seen a degradation of service and carrier reliability that has spawned a new form of service called “dial-tone backup . Yes, the simple phone service has been reduced to another of our progressive steps backwards. We have visited a world our parents never knew. “Dial tone  hell.

Imagine a service and backup business to serve those of us that actually know how fickle and unreliable dial tone delivery has become. From dedicated circuits failing, bringing data to a standstill, to voice lines made inoperable by near endless system changes, and simple line cuts, the phone service reliability of the past is now gone.

When introduced to this novel idea of a phone backup service I instantly remarked WHY?

Then I remembered my own office experience last month. After 28 years of uninterrupted POTS (plain old telephone service) lines never going down, I went to a major VOIP carrier service, based on price, and a corporate mandate from our controller to “save money  (my wife)

Promised by the vendor that the transition would be easy, we proceeded to migrate to our new voice carrier. Issues arose immediately. Then of course a few months later while wandering through Harvard Square, the news came through, “all eight of our lines are down, no estimated time of fix . Of course the plan to forward all calls to our cell phones had long been forgotten; it was nearly 2 months since we had built it. The vendor had calmly explained help was on its way. Hours later I scream for the forwarding to be setup, and an email blast to our clients goes out, and we stabilize the situation. Nearly 5 hours later we are back up, I am spent, wars have started, and my wife and I stop talking. The declaration to go back to simpler times, paying a bit more for simple services prevail, and a lesson learnt.

There is no doubt that in the future we will again seek new technology, try better and less expensive alternatives, and test the patience of the angry telecom gods. Progress is painful, but it comes. I will never stop respecting the simple elegance of our early technology, and how we took it for granted. For all those men and women who made it happen, I thank you. Your work and brilliance will become even more apparent as we struggle with tomorrows new solutions, and yes, I do hear your laughter in the background as I sign on for my dial tone backup plan today!

Larry Shulman
President
L.M.S. Technical Services, Inc.