Jane Edwards
Don Parente, vice president of public sector sales and solution architecture at MetTel, said the U.S. Mint and other federal agencies should begin planning amid the looming retirement of plain old telephone services and other copper telephone lines, Federal News Network reported Monday.
According to Parente, the Federal Communication Commission recently permitted local exchange carriers to shut down copper wires, a move that is accelerating the issuance of disconnect notices to agencies.
“We get calls from agencies or companies saying they have received a disconnect notice. The key here is to plan and get ahead of it. I think IT professionals know it’s coming as do those in charge of alarm systems or elevators, but there are plenty of folks who need to learn it’s coming and start planning ahead,” Parente said on FNN’s Ask the CIO program.
The MetTel executive stated that agencies should see the need to modernize as they see a rise in the cost of supporting POTS and other legacy technologies.
“The move to voice over IP and IP in general is a more efficient protocol to route calls or telecommunications across the network. There is a need to modernize and evolve, which is part of what is driving this change,” Parente noted.
As support for POTS comes to an end, he also called on agencies to develop a way to support fire alarms, supervisory control and data acquisition systems and other technologies from a network internet protocol perspective and “retrofit what exists.”
