The POTS Retirement Timeline Just Got Shorter

In Brief: Tyler Williams discusses the accelerated timeline for POTS retirement, emphasizing the need for hospitality businesses to plan and implement alternative solutions for their emergency phone systems.

The POTS Retirement Timeline Just Got Shorter – Your Emergency Phones Need a Plan – Image Credit Kings III

Kings III has been telling property managers that Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) lines are on borrowed time for several years. For more than a decade, carriers have been raising prices, neglecting maintenance, and openly signaling their intent to retire copper infrastructure. The conversation has been the same: this is coming, and the time to plan a replacement is before the notice arrives, not after.

That timeline got significantly shorter on March 26, 2026.

What the FCC Ruling Changed

The FCC voted to pass the Network and Services Modernization Order, removing most of the federal process that previously slowed carriers from retiring copper wire centers. Filings, public comment periods, and months of regulatory review are largely gone. In most cases, carriers now only need to give customers 90 days’ notice before service ends.

That notice window is already showing up in mailboxes. Some properties are receiving 30 to 90 day notices that their legacy service is being sunset and they need to make alternative arrangements. AT&T has approval to retire POTS service at more than 30% of its wire centers by the end of 2026, with full copper retirement targeted for 2029. Verizon, Frontier, and Lumen are operating under the same framework.

If your property still has emergency phones running on POTS lines, the question is no longer whether you’ll need to replace them. It’s whether you’ll do it on your timeline or your carrier’s.

Emergency Phones Are Easy to Forget

When buildings replace landlines, emergency phones are often the last thing people think about. They’re installed in elevator cabs and shaft rooms, they’re not bundled with the rest of the telecom package, and they tend to operate quietly until they’re needed. Without regular testing or active monitoring, a disconnected line can go unnoticed until someone presses the button during an actual emergency.

There’s a code consideration here too. ASME elevator code requires that the monitoring operator identify the calling cab without input from the caller. A passenger in a medical emergency, panicked, or trapped may not be able to answer follow-up questions about their location. A phone that’s lost its connection, or one that runs through a system that can’t reliably pass location data, fails that requirement.

VoIP Looks Like the Easy Answer. It Usually Isn’t.

When property managers learn their POTS lines are going away, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is typically the first replacement they consider. It’s familiar, vendors deploy it everywhere else in the building, and the per-line cost is lower than analog. For office phones and conference rooms, that math works.

For emergency phones, the calculation is different. VoIP routes calls through your internet connection, which creates a few specific issues:

Power outages take VoIP offline. When the router loses power, the emergency phone connected to it goes dark. That’s exactly the scenario where the phone is most likely to be needed.

Location identification is unreliable. VoIP systems frequently fail to pass calling cab data through to the monitoring operator, which creates a code compliance gap.

DTMF tones can degrade in transit. Emergency dialers use DTMF signals to transmit location and identification data. VoIP doesn’t always carry those tones cleanly, causing failures even when the call connects.

Network exposure is a real consideration. Emergency phones in elevator lobbies and stairwells sit in publicly accessible spaces. Connecting them to your building’s network introduces an access point that most IT teams would want flagged before installation, not after.

VoIP can work in some configurations. But without significant modifications, the variables involved make it a poor fit for a system that needs to perform reliably in the worst conditions a building will ever face.

Cellular Is Built for This

Cellular emergency phone solutions don’t share VoIP’s dependencies. They operate independently of your internet connection, your router, and your IT infrastructure.

Kings III’s cellular solution was designed specifically for elevator and property emergency phones. It uses an ADA-compliant hands-free phone in the cab connected to a cellular transceiver placed outside the shaft for optimal signal. It runs on the LTE network, includes the four-hour battery backup ASME code requires, and handles caller location identification automatically.

When activated, our cellular calls reach our Emergency Dispatch Center faster than calls coming in over POTS lines. The system has also proven more reliable in natural disasters, when the conditions that emergency phones are most needed for are also the conditions that knock other systems offline. Our cellular dialer is FirstNet capable, giving customers the added option to utilize priority access on the network built for first responders when general networks are congested.

Many cellular dialers on the market are consumer-grade hardware adapted for commercial use. They tend to fall short on the details that matter for emergency communications, like battery backup duration, phone line verification, and code-compliant location ID. Our cellular solution meets and exceeds those requirements because it was built for this purpose, not adapted to it.

Replacing the Lines Is Simpler Than It Sounds

The most common pushback we hear is that line replacement sounds like a major project. For most properties, it isn’t. Our cellular solution uses your building’s existing copper wiring and a standard 120V AC outlet. There’s no major infrastructure work, no carrier contract to manage, and no IT involvement required after installation.

Kings III’s all-inclusive solution covers equipment, installation, cellular connectivity, lifetime maintenance, and 24/7/365 emergency monitoring and dispatch under a single cost structure. The system auto-tests on our end after installation, so once it’s in, it’s running.

If your property is on POTS lines and you’d rather plan the transition than react to a 90-day notice, talk to a Kings III expert. We’ll walk you through what a switch looks like for your property. We’ll walk you through what a switch looks like for your property.