Local Inbound Calling Redundancy in the PSTN

In today’s fast-paced business environment, effective communication is a key to success. Whether you’re a small startup or a large enterprise, clear and concise communication with customers, employees, and partners is essential for building lasting relationships and driving growth. With the advent of digital and cloud communications, businesses now have more ways than ever to connect with their stakeholders, regardless of location.

With the digital transformation of communications comes the challenge of dealing with increased networking complexity. This can result in a higher risk of downtime and service disruptions, which can have serious consequences for businesses. Ensuring communication channels remain operational is crucial.

No matter the stage of digital transformation any organization or business may be at, there is a solution to many network outages: redundancy in the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).

• Geographic Redundancy
• Outbound Calling Redundancy
• Network Redundancy
• Inbound Calling Redundancy

These four levels of redundancy help businesses ensure reliable communications, even in times of crisis. Each is vital to achieve uninterrupted communications for any size business or organization.

What is the PSTN?  

The Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) is a global network of interconnected telephone lines and switching centers that allow people to make voice calls to each other.

But the PSTN wasn’t always so vast or so capable. Initially, the PSTN, which dates back to when the first telegraph systems were introduced in 1844, was made up of a series of manually operated local exchanges that were eventually linked together to form a national network. This national network was the primary means of voice communication for over 100 years, until the advent of digital communications technology. 

The PSTN is still in use today. It now uses a combination of analog and digital technologies to connect calls between different telephone lines and switching centers. While there are new regulations and technological updates happening within the PSTN, it is still dependent upon legacy technologies.

The PSTN is the foundation of modern telephony. Thus, it is absolutely vital to account for impairments in the PSTN.  How do we account for these hiccups and guarantee service? With redundancy in geographic presence, multiple PSTN on ramps, and through multi- layered virtual networks. 

Safety in Redundancy 

Partnering with NUSO Enables You to Help Your Customers When Disaster Strikes

Geographic (geo) redundancy is the practice of replicating critical systems, like data centers or network infrastructure, across different geographic locations to ensure they remain available and reliable, even during disasters or outages. In the PSTN, geo redundancy means having installations of multiple switching and routing equipment across several Points of Presence (PoPs) connected through failover-ready communication links. So, if one PoP experiences an issue, traffic can automatically switch to another, preventing service interruptions.

Network redundancy refers to the presence of backup components, such as servers, routers, and network connections, that can take over if the primary components fail. This means having multiple paths or switches within a specific network to keep the call going in case one fails. 

While geographic and network redundancy should be table stakes when choosing a telephony provider, start-ups and large enterprises alike can ensure even higher availability by working with someone who also has redundant paths outside of a single PSTN on-ramp. Even with geographic and network redundancy built into a carrier network, relying on one network can leave start-ups and large enterprises with impacted service. A single point of impairment or failure in the communications network can cause significant downtime, leading to lost revenue, missed opportunities, and diminished customer satisfaction. 

Why Customers Need Redundancy 

Most businesses rely heavily on communication technologies to conduct their daily operations. When these systems and technologies fail, it has significant consequences, including lost productivity, revenue, and customer trust.

Having a reliable, redundant network helps mitigate these risks. Here’s how:

• Redundancy duplicates critical systems and infrastructure across multiple locations, reducing the risk of outages during network impairments or disasters.
• Redundant networks have automated failover capability, redirecting traffic to functional components if one fails.
• Network redundancy solutions allow providers to proactively monitor telecom networks, detect and isolate issues, and perform maintenance without causing downtime.

Local Inbound Calling Redundancy with NUSOflex

While redundancy for outbound and inbound toll-free voice calls is expected with reputable phone service providers, a local inbound voice call can be impacted by a local network event as well. When traditional carrier networks have impairments in their local networks, end-user businesses carry the burden. Inbound calls to the business may be intermittent or down entirely. This results in lost time, lost revenue, and poor customer service. 

Identifying a market need for redundancy on local inbound voice calls, NUSO developed a solution. NUSOflex, winner of the 2023 Unified Communications Product of the Year, is engineered to anticipate and reroute around local, inbound voice service impairments. 

NUSOflex extends the concept of cloud computing infrastructure to the PSTN environment by leveraging multiple PSTN onramps and virtual network components for dynamic meshed connectivity. NUSOflex is designed and tested by NUSO’s network monitoring teams and engineers. It incorporates machine learning to anticipate and provide automatic network redundancy for inbound calls, no matter the origin of the call. NUSOflex helps businesses ensure phones remain operational in the event of a local network outage or network impairment.

Contact NUSO for a demonstration of NUSOflex.