Why Ditching Your Legacy Fax Hardware Just Became an Immediate Priority

An FCC ruling allows telecom companies to cease support for analog communications, which means you may not be  able to rely on your fax machines or on-prem fax servers for much longer.

As a corporate IT professional, you probably have many valid reasons for wanting to finally dump your legacy fax infrastructure—from the hassles of troubleshooting paper jams to the high costs of renewing maintenance agreements.

But based on a federal regulation just updated in August 2022, if your company needs reliable and affordable faxing capability going forward, you’ll actually need to retire that legacy fax infrastructure—quickly—and replace it with something new.

What Are POTS Lines and How Do They Work?

POTS, short for Plain Old Telephone Service, refers to the traditional copper-based phone lines that carried analog voice signals for more than a century. These lines transmit sound as electrical signals over a physical network of copper wires, which makes them reliable but limited in speed and flexibility.

For years, businesses depended on POTS lines not only for voice communication but also for connecting fax machines, alarm systems and point-of-sale devices. But, as digital networks have advanced, POTS lines have become costly to maintain and less efficient compared to modern alternatives. The FCC POTS decommissioning order has further accelerated their decline, pushing organizations to explore replacement solutions that are more secure, scalable, and cost-effective.

What This Federal Ruling Means for You

For decades, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) required telecommunications companies to offer their customers affordable analog communications using the POTS. However, with the ever-increasing availability and falling costs of digital services such as VoIP, millions of customers have implemented POTS line replacement on their own, making these services both more burdensome and less profitable for carriers.

In 2019, the FCC issued a ruling allowing these companies to retire their POTS infrastructure over a three-year transition period, which ended in August 2022. However, it’s important to note that “the Commission has not mandated the decommissioning of POTS lines. In FCC 19-72, adopted in August 2019, the Commission granted forbearance from two narrow regulatory obligations imposed on incumbent local exchange carriers (LECs). Specifically, the Commission granted forbearance relief to price cap LECs throughout their local service areas from the obligations to (1) make analog copper loops available to competitive LECs on an unbundled basis at TELRIC rates, and (2) offer for resale at wholesale rates any telecommunications service that the carrier provides at retail to subscribers who are not telecommunications carriers.”

This ruling does not mean that all POTS lines must be replaced with alternative services immediately, but it does signal a strong push towards digital communication methods. During the three-year transition period, competitive LECs were required to make alternative arrangements in the affected service areas. Now that the transition period has ended, it’s likely that your phone carrier is working to decommission these lines.

4 Reliable Solutions to Replace Legacy POTS Infrastructure

With POTS replacement now an immediate priority, businesses need to adopt alternatives that maintain reliability without relying on outdated copper lines. Here are four proven options.

1. Wireless Business Lines

Wireless connections, delivered through LTE or 5G networks, offer strong voice quality and improved mobility. These services can replace traditional phone lines for business communications while reducing dependence on physical infrastructure.

2. VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol)

VoIP technology routes voice calls through the internet instead of copper lines. It offers features like call forwarding, voicemail-to-email and scalability at a lower cost than legacy fax systems or POTS-based phones.

3. Fiber-Optic Lines

Fiber connections provide high-speed, reliable communication and can support voice, video and data services on a single network. For larger organizations, fiber can be the preferred option for future-proofing infrastructure.

4. Cloud Faxing

Many companies still need secure fax solutions for regulatory compliance. Cloud faxing replaces legacy fax systems by transmitting documents digitally through encrypted channels. This eliminates the need for fax hardware or analog lines and ensures compliance with HIPAA, GLBA and other privacy regulations. Cloud fax is one of the most efficient POTS replacement alternatives for businesses that exchange sensitive documents.

Why You Should Be Looking for a New Fax Solution Right Now

A word of warning. Perhaps you’re one of the lucky organizations whose phone carrier is behind on the FCC’s August 2022 transition deadline. Maybe your carrier hasn’t even begun the work of drawing down the POTS infrastructure that supports your analog fax lines. You should not treat your carrier’s delay as an opportunity to relax your own search for a more modern business faxing alternative.

There are two important reasons for this. First, as your carrier migrates its resources away from supporting your POTS-enabled analog service, you should expect both the quality and reliability of service to deteriorate. Second, the longer it takes your carrier to fully eliminate its POTS infrastructure, the more likely it is that your costs for maintaining that outdated service will rise. After all, another key provision of the FCC’s ruling was to remove the price caps on what carriers are allowed to charge for POTS-enabled services.

The Smart, Easy Way to Migrate Your Fax Environment Away from POTS

So, while the FCC has not mandated the full shutdown of POTS communications, the regulatory environment has made it clear that reliance on these outdated systems is no longer viable. Even if your provider hasn’t yet decommissioned the POTS infrastructure supporting your faxing capabilities, they will likely do so soon—and from their perspective, the sooner, the better.

What do you do now? There is one extremely simple and cost-effective solution: switch to digital cloud fax. Moving your company to the right, enterprise-caliber cloud faxing solution will mean:

• Your IT team won’t have any onsite hardware to administer or troubleshoot.
• Your staff will be able to send, receive, view, edit, and sign faxes digitally from any computer, tablet, or smartphone.
• Your company will have an affordable, pay-as-you-go fax solution that you can scale up—or down—as much and as often as you need.
• You’ll save time and money by eliminating the time-consuming manual steps of legacy faxing—and replacing them with a streamlined digital platform that integrates seamlessly with your other workflow apps. 

And, perhaps most important for our current conversation: 

• You’ll move your faxing environment from dependence on the near-obsolete POTS to a future-proof cloud-based communications platform currently serving literally millions of businesses’ daily faxing needs.

How to Prepare for the Shift from POTS Lines

Transitioning away from POTS requires planning to avoid disruptions.

Here are key steps you should take:

1. Audit existing systems
2. Assess compliance needs
3. Evaluate alternatives
4. Plan a phased migration 
5. Train staff
6. Monitor and optimize 

Identify all devices and services tied to POTS lines, including fax machines, alarms and elevators. Then, determine which systems require secure fax solutions or specific regulatory safeguards. After that, compare VoIP, fiber, wireless, and cloud-based options to see which best fits your business.

Next, shift critical services before you gradually retire legacy fax systems and copper lines. Make sure employees understand how to use new systems and where to find support. As you come to the end of your migration, review performance to make sure your system is efficient, secure and cost-saving.

eFax: Secure and Reliable Cloud-Based Faxing Alternative to POTS

When it comes to POTS line replacement, eFax stands out as a secure and scalable option for modern businesses. Unlike hardware-based systems, eFax delivers cloud faxing that integrates directly with email, mobile apps, and enterprise workflows.

Why eFax is the best choice:

• No physical fax machines or copper lines required.
• Ensures PHI and sensitive data remain protected in transit and at rest.
• Meets HIPAA, SOX, GLBA, and other strict security standards.
• Works seamlessly with existing email platforms, CRMs, and document management systems.
• Supports organizations of all sizes, from small businesses to global enterprises.
• Cloud faxing remains operational during outages that might disrupt traditional lines.

With eFax, you get cloud-based flexibility, end-to-end encryption, regulatory compliance, ease of integration, scalability and business continuity. Replace your outdated POTS infrastructure as you reduce costs and boost efficiency.

In 2019, the FCC issued a ruling allowing these companies to retire their POTS infrastructure over a three-year transition period, which ended in August 2022. However, it’s important to note that “the Commission has not mandated the decommissioning of POTS lines. In FCC 19-72, adopted in August 2019, the Commission granted forbearance from two narrow regulatory obligations imposed on incumbent local exchange carriers (LECs). Specifically, the Commission granted forbearance relief to price cap LECs throughout their local service areas from the obligations to (1) make analog copper loops available to competitive LECs on an unbundled basis at TELRIC rates, and (2) offer for resale at wholesale rates any telecommunications service that the carrier provides at retail to subscribers who are not telecommunications carriers.”

This ruling does not mean that all POTS lines must be replaced with alternative services immediately, but it does signal a strong push towards digital communication methods. During the three-year transition period, competitive LECs were required to make alternative arrangements in the affected service areas. Now that the transition period has ended, it’s likely that your phone carrier is working to decommission these lines.

Why You Should Be Looking for a New Fax Solution Right Now

A word of warning. Perhaps you’re one of the lucky organizations whose phone carrier is behind on the FCC’s August 2022 transition deadline. Maybe your carrier hasn’t even begun the work of drawing down the POTS infrastructure that supports your analog fax lines. You should not treat your carrier’s delay as an opportunity to relax your own search for a more modern business-faxing alternative.

There are two important reasons for this. First, as your carrier migrates its resources away from supporting your POTS-enabled analog service, you should expect both the quality and reliability of service to deteriorate. Second, the longer it takes your carrier to fully eliminate its POTS infrastructure, the more likely it is that your costs for maintaining that outdated service will rise. After all, another key provision of the FCC’s ruling was to remove the price caps on what carriers are allowed to charge for POTS-enabled services.

The Smart, Easy Way to Migrate Your Fax Environment Away from POTS

So, while the FCC has not mandated the full shutdown of POTS communications, the regulatory environment has made it clear that reliance on these outdated systems is no longer viable. Even if your provider hasn’t yet decommissioned the POTS infrastructure supporting your faxing capabilities, they will likely do so soon—and from their perspective, the sooner, the better.

What do you do now? There is one extremely simple and cost-effective solution: switch to digital cloud fax. Moving your company to the right, enterprise-caliber cloud faxing solution will mean:

• Your IT team won’t have any onsite hardware to administer or troubleshoot.
• Your staff will be able to send, receive, view, edit, and sign faxes digitally from any computer, tablet, or smartphone.
• Your company will have an affordable, pay-as-you-go fax solution that you can scale up—or down—as much and as often as you need.
• You’ll save time and money by eliminating the time-consuming manual steps of legacy faxing—and replacing them with a streamlined digital platform that integrates seamlessly with your other workflow apps. 

And, perhaps most important for our current conversation: 

• You’ll move your faxing environment from dependence on the near-obsolete POTS to a future-proof cloud-based communications platform currently serving literally millions of businesses’ daily faxing needs.

Kamran Shafii

Content Manager