If your business still runs on traditional copper phone lines, often called POTS lines (“plain old telephone service”), you’ve probably noticed the bills creeping up and the repair calls taking longer. That’s no accident. The big carriers are steadily retiring their copper networks and moving customers off them, and it’s happening in neighborhoods across Louisville and around the country.
The good news: getting off copper doesn’t have to be a headache, and for most businesses it ends up costing less. Here’s what’s changing, what to check before you switch, and how to make the move without losing a single phone number.
Why carriers are walking away from copper
Copper phone networks were built decades ago. They’re expensive to maintain, parts and technicians are harder to find, and fewer customers use them every year. Carriers would rather put their money into fiber and wireless, so they’re raising prices on legacy lines, slowing down repairs, and in many areas sending notices that copper service is being discontinued.
For a business, that adds up to three problems:
- Rising cost. You pay more every year for the same dial tone.
- Slower fixes. When a line goes down, the wait for a repair can stretch out, and a dead line means missed customers.
- A deadline you don’t control. When a retirement notice shows up, you’re working on the carrier’s timeline, not yours.
The smartest move is to plan the switch before you’re forced into it.
What actually runs on your POTS lines?
Before you change anything, take inventory. Most businesses have more copper lines than they realize, and not all of them are for talking on the phone. Walk through your building and list:
- Main and direct business numbers your customers call
- Fax lines, even the one you only use a few times a month
- Alarm and security panel lines
- Fire alarm panel lines
- Elevator emergency phones
- Credit card or gate lines and any other single-purpose connections
The voice lines are the easy part. The specialty lines (alarm, fire panel, elevator) need more care, because they have to keep working reliably and may need to satisfy your inspector or monitoring company. Don’t let anyone treat those as an afterthought.
Your options for replacing copper
Voice lines: move to a cloud phone system
For everyday calling, a cloud phone system replaces your copper lines with service that runs over your internet connection. Your team gets desk phones, a mobile app, and computer calling, all on the same business number. Features that used to cost extra on a traditional phone system, like auto attendants, call forwarding and voicemail, come built in.
With Louisville Telecom, our standard rate is $19.99 per seat, with volume discounts for more seats, and additional extension lines are $6.99. Seats with a direct number include simple texting, so customers can text your business number (10DLC campaign approval is required before business texting can be used). If you need more, Microsoft Teams calling, an AI receptionist, call center tools and cloud messaging are available as paid add-ons.
To see how that stacks up against what you’re paying now, try our pricing calculator on Plans & Features.
Fax: you have choices
Faxing isn’t dead, especially in healthcare, legal, and construction. When the copper goes, you can:
- Use cloud fax to send and receive from your computer,
- Have incoming faxes delivered to your inbox with fax-to-email, or
- Keep your existing fax machine on an adapter.
Alarm, fire panel and elevator lines
These are where many providers drop the ball. They’ll move your voice lines and leave you to figure out the rest. At Louisville Telecom, our own team handles alarm, fire panel and elevator line replacement, so there’s one company accountable for every line in your building.
“Will I lose my phone number?”
No. This is the question we hear most, and the answer is simple: you keep your numbers. Moving a number from one provider to another is called porting, and for business numbers it typically takes about 10 business days. Your current lines keep working the whole time, so customers never hit a dead number while it’s in progress.
A few tips to make porting smooth:
- Have a recent copy of your phone bill handy. The account number and the name on the account need to match exactly.
- List every number you want to keep, including fax and any numbers that just forward.
- Don’t cancel your old service until the port is complete. We’ll tell you when it’s safe.
How to try it without the risk
Switching phone systems feels risky because your phones are your business. That’s why we keep it low-pressure:
- A 14-day free trial with no credit card required, so you can test calling before you commit.
- Free loaner phones and setup, so you aren’t buying hardware just to try it.
- A 60-day service guarantee covering call quality issues.
We’re based right here in Louisville, and we serve businesses nationwide. With more than 3,000 active seats and 600+ business clients, we’ve helped plenty of companies make this exact move.
A simple checklist to get started
- Pull your last two phone bills and count your lines.
- Label each line: voice, fax, alarm, fire panel, elevator, or other.
- Check your internet connection. Your cloud phones will depend on it.
- Decide which numbers you want to keep (usually all of them).
- Call us for a quote and a 14-day free trial (no credit card required).
Don’t wait for the notice
Copper isn’t coming back. Businesses that plan the switch on their own schedule get to test, train their staff, and port their numbers calmly. The ones that wait often end up scrambling after a retirement letter or a long outage.
If you’d like a straight answer about what your business would pay and what it would take to move every line, call (502) 430-1234 or contact us. A real person here in Louisville will walk you through it.
Try it free for 14 days. Free loaner phones, free setup, no credit card.