The dinner plates started rattling.

They were making dinging sounds in the hutch.

“What the hell?” I thought.

Is there some kind of construction going on?

I started to feel dizzy as I suddenly realized it was an earthquake.

I ran outside to my wife who was mowing the lawn.

She had no clue what was going on.

While I’m having a mild anxiety attack, she’s happily strolling along.

The vibration of the mower made it so she didn’t even notice.

I’m yelling at her, “Did you feel that?”

By the time she killed the engine, the quake was over.

“What?”she says to me.

“We just had an earthquake!”

“Shut up.”

“I’m serious, it was shaking everything in the house.”

She restarts the mower.

***************************

What’s the first thing everyone did when the 2011 D.C. earthquake happened?

They reached for their phone, turned on the TV, and tried calling everyone they knew to say, “I survived!”

Justin Wm. Moyer, of The Washington Post titled this event, The disaster that wasn’t.

So what’s the point?

I received a comment the other day asking me if I thought the business phone or the business phone system would even be relevant in the coming years.

“I mean everyone uses a cell phone now, who needs a phone.”

I appreciate this type of comment because it points out the fact that they most likely have a crappy old PBX and dinosaur handset sitting on their desk.

Thank you for opening up a can of “Unified Communications.”

Let’s just hit on a few points as to why the business phone system is not going to disappear.

First of all, business communications systems are more reliable in crisis situations.

When people really need to use their mobile phone… they can’t.

Why?

“All circuits are busy!”

Cell phone towers only have so much bandwidth.

Can you imagine if the emergency room phones didn’t work?

How are we going to page Dr. Phil?

Cell tower backhaul links can only move so much traffic, and in many cases, they are oversubscribed.

I don’t care what LTE, 4g, 5g buzzwords are thrown at you.

Provider CEOs run a business, and they will do what the FCC tells them to do, but no more than is needed to serve their business model on a daily basis.

Constructing new towers, negotiating roof rights, gaining new subscribers, and beating the competition is the business goal.

The goal is not to pay for reserve bandwidth.

That’s money on the shelf.

People sit in the NOC (Network Operations Center) and watch graphs to monitor bandwidth usage. 

No one cares if bandwidth peaks out a little when the kids get out of school.

Every noticed your internet slow down at certain times of day?

Hmmm… thus why dedicated services are better for business.

Further, from having sold network backhaul for years, I know that there are serious network design limitations.

Years ago I had to ask the US Post Office for permission to cut down a tree on their property.

A tree was blocking line-of-site and preventing me from delivering internet in one direction.

To make my point, when a highly unexpected “Force Majeure” event happens, don’t count on cell phones to work.

Please don’t confuse this with all “Wireless Services”.

Dedicated wireless bandwidth within the licensed spectrums, and point-to-point microwave services work outstanding through hurricanes, blizzards, and help commercial entities avoid outages caused by massive floods.

However, when speaking about the mobile phone, I think it’s pretty clear that we can’t use cellphones for everything.

So let’s talk about the obvious physical piece of plastic that sits on so many people’s desks.

Do we have to have it?

Okay, I’ll give you that one… maybe not in as many places as we have them right now.

I rarely pick up the receiver of my phone.

If I do it’s because I don’t have my headset on, I’ve been using the speakerphone, and the conversation tone needs to change.

I use the receiver to speak quieter and get close to the person.

I don’t think many sales people or CEOs would give up this option.

However, there are plenty of companies moving to a softphone only option and utilizing headsets only.

This means that their phone system resides in the cloud and a software version of their phone lives on the desktop of their computer.

In this scenario all one needs is a quality headset, which still run $150 – $300.

My phone retails at about $120 and my headset $250.

I also have a “Mobile App” on my smart phone so that I can make and receive business calls separately from my personal mobile number.

So yes, the advent of technology has allowed for many ways to get rid of that piece of plastic on your desk, and I would even go so far as to encourage you to do so if it doesn’t integrate with all of your communications systems.

My headset for example, toggles between my cell phone, desk phone, and computer automatically.

I use ZOOM as my webinar platform daily… my headset works beautifully.

I get calls on my cellphone while I am sitting at my desk… My headset works beautifully.

I get calls on my office line, and if I get calls transferred to me… My headset works beautifully.

So I guess I don’t need a handset personally, but I like it.

Now if was sitting in the waiting room looking to make a quick call, or waiting outside the door of a business complex needing to be buzzed in, or working on the warehouse floor needing to page someone, or frantically looking for a phone by the pool to call 911, or walking across campus looking for a “Blue Phone” because there is a creeper following me, or needing to page a trauma surgeon, or stuck with my cell phone not working in an earthquake, or needing to call a “code black” because the lion escaped… then I would need that physical device.

Further, I don’t see Verizon getting ready to scrap their Enterprise Business Voice anytime soon and move everyone over to their mobile network.

Maybe they’ll let the copper fall by the wayside a little, lol, but the business phone system is going to take on a whole new meaning in the next few years.

Yes, we will call it Unified Communications, and make up a tone of industry jargon meant to dazzle and confuse you, but the business phone system will only get better.

When looking back at the market in 2017, Frost and Sullivan reported that the “(IP) telephony and unified communications as a service (UCaaS) market experienced healthy growth of 32.1% in terms of installed users and 30.6% in terms of revenue (without access). The market is expected to maintain robust double-digit growth rates throughout the forecast period from 2017 until 2023.”

Further some of the findings noted by Frost and Sullivan and “key growth drivers” were a “growing customer demand for more flexible technology” and “Premises-based communications solutions reaching end of life.”

So the question is not, “will the business phone system become end of life,” rather how will it transform to help businesses become more competitive in the marketplace.

The DID, the auto attendant, the call center, and the live human on the other end of the trunk will not go away or it means humanity has come to an end as we know it.