Big Switch-Off Update

There’s now just twelve-months until the UK reaches the first major ‘Stop Sell’ – after which new analogue telephone line services will no longer be available to purchase.

The clock is also ticking for businesses with analogue services still in use: by 2025, all telecoms services in the UK that rely on traditional analogue (PSTN) copper phones lines will be declared ‘End-of-Life’ and will be officially ceased.

Analogue phone lines
ADSL & FTTC (‘superfast’) broadband connections
ISDN phone lines
Other – e.g: analogue fax & alarms lines

What should your organisation do to prepare for the big switch-off? First, check out our handy guide, but to summarise, businesses have a few options:

 

pstn switch offClick Here

 

Move to a cloud-hosted system

Most businesses (and homes) will likely choose to migrate their phone system to a similar setup that is cloud hosted, in future relying on VOIP technology to route calls over their internet connection instead, and taking their old analogue number(s) with them. This is also the option most of the UK’s major telecoms companies will be pushing as major improvements to UK broadband infrastructure are rolled-out.

Your new phone system could be a dedicated hosted telecoms platform, or even telephony functionality enabled in another communications platform, such as via Microsoft Teams.

 

Upgrade to SIP

For many of those already committed to a traditional onsite PBX, moving to a SIP service is also a viable alternative – replacing outdated ISDN lines with digitally-registered SIP channels for cost effectiveness.

This a better option for those operating at large scale, or with extremely specialised telecoms hardware functions that don’t have cloud-based alternatives available.

 

Go Fully-Mobile

If your organisation is heavily distributed to the extent that it has no centralised inbound call handling, there’s always the option of moving entirely to mobiles – although numbering challenges mean this won’t suit everyone.

Alternatively, you can combine this with Option #1, and deploy work soft phones to staff mobiles for a super-flexible work phone system without all the extra plastic.

 

For communications support and expertise, please contact our team today.


How Your Outlook Stops Spam Emails

Outlook Stops Spam Emails

At Lineal we’ve found the most commented upon feature of Microsoft’s Office 365 email has been the reduction of spam – but why does running your email from the cloud make Outlook 2016 so much better at blocking these annoying spam emails?

On your old in-house email server, Outlook stops spam emails being delivered based on whatever policies and protection you’ve put there and maintained (or not…,) whilst Office 365 is managed all year round as a remote service, with up-to-the-hour security updates in Microsoft data centres. Moving your business email to the cloud ensures your inboxes are not just company compliant, but physically and virtually safer.

Firstly, Office 365 checks your email for known suspicious attachments or malicious links. If neither are found, your email is screened through three independent Anti-virus engines, before being delivered safely to your inbox.

But what if something suspicious is found? Malicious links are re-written where possible, and suspicious attachments are removed to a sandboxed (isolated in software) ‘detonation chamber’, where they are opened safely to check for harmful code. Any attachments still deemed to be dangerous are removed from the email before being processed further.

Due to sheer volume of email processed through Office 365, Microsoft are also able to use information about all threats seen worldwide, and protect your inbox from even brand new ‘zero-day’ dangers seen elsewhere online.

Office 365 business packages (which can be trialled for free via Lineal) have been made increasingly secure over the past year – with Microsoft opening new UK based data centres and introducing new admin centre for power users to manage system usage in large organisations more effectively. 97% of people can’t identify a phishing email, so it’s important to know that Office 365 will remain vigilant.

Lineal are a Gold Microsoft Partner: for Cloud help and support contact our team today.