A Pew Research study that was publicized this week indicated that some Americans have a harder time giving up landlines than social media. From the study: "While 28% of landline owners say it would be 'very hard' to give up that wired connection, that amounts to only 17% of the total adult population. More surprising is the news that, despite the country’s increasing dependence on the internet, survey respondents who have landline phones still thought that their home phones would be harder to give up than social media." (Here's a full summary.)

For consumers, the growth of Internet Protocol (IP) and wireless technology is rapidly displacing our traditional system of copper landlines. As a result, more and more consumers are shedding landlines in favor of Voice-over IP (VoIP) plans or mobile phones, which can be more cost effective and are completely portable.

But what about businesses? Do copper lines still offer value? Certainly, VoIP systems can offer a host of additional benefits that landlines cannot, such as easily adding or removing users or connecting multi-site organizations across one network for easy call transfer. VoIP systems also allow companies to take advantage of a host of features at a fraction of the cost, including auto-attendant, on-hold music, voicemail and fax to email, call recording, and more. Really, the only benefit that landlines have over VoIP is that they are not dependent on electricity or the internet, so they are always available in an emergency.

We believe that VoIP solutions will trump copper in nearly every situation, even for smaller businesses, especially when they start growing. Watch for more information on this topic in the future!