Phone System Equipment Integration

It’s 1968, and Texan Tom Carter decides he wants to hook up his own phone to the telephone company’s lines.

It’s never been done before, and Tom’s Carterfone winds up creating the “big bang” of modern telecommunications.

By the end of the landmark FCC case decision to allow customer owned equipment into the public utility stream, the telecommunications industry would never be the same again.

In those days, equipment was naturally integrated. It was before the time of manufacturer branding, which became popular during the 1980s, but whose time has faded.

The days of being married to one – and only one – telecom brand are gone.

Business consumers today may have many different manufacturers’ products making up their telecommunications systems, and there is nothing wrong with that approach.

Maybe the voice mail needs replacing, but the rest of the telecom system is relatively new and in good working order. What’s more maybe there is a better or more flexible voice mail available, and it may not be from the phone system’s manufacturer.

Industry standard protocols allow different manufacturer’s equipment to work together so upgrades and new products can be brought into the telecom family.

Parts like hard drives, or voice mail packages can be replaced when necessary without touching the remaining equipment, and the system should continue to run smoothly.

Integration allows systems to be more flexible, and carry more functions than ever before.

And while there are always some technical limitations, by and large, most equipment brands work together with every other brand because manufacturers realize they have to be flexible to stay in the game.

Replacing one thing instead of the entire system is also more cost and often time efficient. After all, a doctor doesn’t treat the entire body when a patient comes in complaining of elbow tendonitis.

So why replace a perfectly good phone system, when the hard drive goes bad or the voice mail crashes?