With the emergence of commercially available business Internet Protocol-based (IP) voice solutions in the late 1990’s, many people thought the efficiencies of transporting real-time audio media across data networks would spell certain doom for the public switched telephone network (PSTN). However, even more than 30 years later, the PSTN is still alive and in demand.
Since then, business IP telephony has been incorporated into the broader notion of unified communications (UC). Frost & Sullivan defines UC as an integrated set of voice, video and data-based communications tools that are underpinned by centralized management and user access from a unified interface. Call control, including the ability to dial numbers and access features such as call hold, transfer, and park, are central and essential to UC solutions.
IP telephony has experienced significant increased adoption in the business landscape across industries, surpassing traditional digital and analog PBXs and communications services in terms of installed seats. Today, many IP telephony users have ingrained capabilities into their workflows such as click-to-call and click-to-join meetings from within their contacts, calendars and other applications using IP-based desktop phones or software clients, as well as dialing numbers from virtual dial pads.
Since the start of the pandemic, Frost & Sullivan has noted a significant shift in the ways the workforce communicates. Driven by widespread work from home and now ongoing hybrid work practices, an unprecedented number of people have become familiar with cloud video conferencing services, such as Zoom, Cisco Webex, Microsoft Teams, GoToMeeting, and others. High usage volumes continue to be reported by these providers today. People are frequently calling their contacts over these services or joining meeting bridges – in peer-to-peer (P2P) fashion rather than picking up the phone and dialing.
There are obvious benefits to IP-based communications. P2P calling and extension dialing for internal and some external interactions is fast, efficient and can save the organization money by reducing local, long distance and international fees as well as various tariffs.
Given the dominance of IP telephony and the increasing pervasiveness of cloud-based meetings, the Connected Work research team had questions that needed further analysis:
- Had the PSTN had finally met its demise?
- Were IT decision makers envisioning a reality in which PSTN will not be needed at all?
To better understand the impact of P2P calling on the PSTN’s relevance, we conducted a survey of 952 technology decision makers worldwide, across industries and organization sizes. Among other information, we sought to determine current and future use of PSTN connectivity.
- 24% said PSTN connectivity from their UC solution or UC provider is not a necessity
- 86% said PSTN connectivity is a desired solution from their UC solution or provider
- 80% provide PSTN access to make/receive calls to greater than 20% of their workforce today
- 93% plan to provide PSTN access to more than 80% of their workforce in 2025
The PSTN, although viewed as a legacy solution, is still increasing in demand. In certain respects, the results are not surprising as PSTN is often the way that companies connect to the outside world and they way that customers and partners connect with them. Telephone numbers, required for calls to traverse the PSTN, are part of nearly every business’ and employee’s professional identity.
The PSTN is also needed to support newer workstyles and business models. Business communications modalities such as increasingly popular mobile UC. Today, road warriors and other remote users have options. They can install a mobile UC app on their device to make or receive calls or, in some cases, access their business number directly from the native dialer on the mobile device. In addition, business short messaging services (SMS) capabilities are inherently tied to the PSTN. As such, the PSTN enables increasingly popular SMS interactions between businesses and their customers for sales and marketing, appointment and delivery notifications, and other uses cases.
Progress is inevitable. Future solutions will likely make the PSTN obsolete. Decommissioning by service providers in various regions has been underway for some time. Widespread digital transformation and the accelerated digitalization of business processes that integrate communications capabilities into business applications, and growing preferences for software clients that provide more seamless access to richer multimedia applications are contributing to the PSTN’s demise.
But the death of the PSTN is still decades away. It remains the most prevalent and federated way that people communicate today, is an important part of an organization’s identity, and is required for a range of modern business processes and workstyles that many organizations have only recently adopted. That is why your communications strategy will continue to require both peer-to-peer and PSTN calling.
