Ep. 227 – Inside the Win: POTS Replacement Opportunities and School District Case Study with Ooma

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Well, hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Inside the Win. I’m Graeme Scott, vice president of network and mobility. And joining me on the call here today is the one and only David Beagle with Ooma. Mister Beagle, how are you, sir?

I’m doing well, Graeme. How are you?

I’m good, man. Good. It’s good to see you. Always enjoy spending time with you. So, Ooma, obviously, big player in the pots replacement space right now.

And, I think this is something we’ve been talking about for years now, but things are really happening in the pots replacement space. Right? A lot of activities going on as people are really starting to realize these things are going away. It’s happening.

So talk a little bit about the space and and what’s going on there right now before we dive into this, this win that we’ve got.

Yeah. I appreciate that. Because you you’re right. We have been talking about it for years.

I mean, since two thousand nineteen. And I would argue that most of us who are watching this probably are numb to the topic. Right? We’ve been talking about it.

It’s gonna go away. These POTS lines, yada yada. The reality was they were never just gonna get turned off in twenty twenty two. Right?

There was always gonna be some migration strategies and whatnot.

But to your point, we are seeing the momentum really picking up. There’s a couple of things that are kinda driving that. AT and T, obviously, has been very aggressive in shutting down their copper lines. If you consider the fact that they they they spend about six billion annually just to maintain that copper infrastructure, they wanna they wanna move away from it.

Right? They wanna save that money. It’s an aging, it’s an aging technology. Those lines deteriorate.

When they break, it takes a long time for them to repair. If they even do repair it at this point. So we’re seeing across the board, even beyond AT and T, the Verizon’s of the world, you know, now that they’ve completed their acquisition of Frontier. We’re seeing it with Windstream.

I think we’ve recently been hearing about how, you know, Lumen has been making some overtures of getting out of the voice space. So there is a lot of there’s a lot of market conditions from the incumbent standpoint that’s pushing this forward. Not not to mention that, again, you know, there’s newer technologies like our solution that are out there that provide the ability to really kinda up game that market. Right?

And what I mean by up gaming, is, you know, I I often term it as bringing pots into the twenty first century. If we’re gonna replace pots lines, let’s do it with something that is better. Right? This is something that is actually more manageable.

And so I you know, one of the things we’ve done this might be interesting, Graeme. I I I know I know you and I have gone over this, but we actually built a tool, an AI engine tool that scrapes all of those discontinuous filings. Those filings out like the AT and Ts and the Verizon’s do where they submit it to the FCC, we scrape all those filings so that we can provide our partners access to the physical filings to provide the proof points this is really happening now. People need to understand what’s going on in the market.

And so it’s called Pots Tracker. And, you know, with some of our strategic partners, they’ve been leaning in here to identify where in the market that’s happening. You know, they’ve been actually uploading some of their address lists, right, where they can actually protect their base. Right?

You know? And say, hey. Some of my clients, they might be exposed here. This gives me the opportunity to go back and kinda educate them on that and and guide them to a a solution.

Right? And, of course, procuring, we always know partners want leads. So Yeah. Use that tool.

Use that tool and go where their wireline centers being shut down and run a list of businesses in that market. Give it to your BDR team and do an outreach. Right? So but, yeah, there’s never been a better time at this point, I think, than to jump on this.

And, you know, we obviously know there’s timelines wrapped around it as well.

So Yeah.

I love it. So we finally got sort of the tools and the technology matching up with market conditions. Right? These carriers are wanting to get out of the game as quick as they can, and it’s creating tremendous opportunity for our advisers. So let’s dive in a little bit on one of the most recent ones we had. Really good win with a partner, a Telarus partner that, you know, wasn’t really, I would say, proficient in this space. He had some really good connections, but this wasn’t something he had sold before and kind of stumbled into this as a as an opportunity through some relationships he had.

And, you know, shame on me. You know, I know you love to poke fun of me at this, but I I kinda brought you guys to the party a little bit late on this one, yet turned out you guys were the best fit. So talk a little bit about the the customer and how you guys were able to really kind of, close down this opportunity for, for the partner.

Yeah. Beautiful. It’s a school district. It’s a very large school district in Georgia. And, you know, this particular partner does have some background, a little bit more around the voice services for sure.

Right? He has some strong relationships. I don’t know how much in the background he’s he’s dealt with pots, but I do know that what he did what he did recognize is that he can leverage the relationship he had with Telarus to find the right right providers and right players. So, yes, Graeme, I poke fun at you with all the time about this particular thing.

And so for those listening, understand that this particular opportunity was eleven hundred lines. Right? Yeah. Graeme and I had many conversations where Ooma, from a branding perspective, has always kinda be been looked at as kind of an SMB play.

Yeah.

And I always argued, no. We’re we we can go up. Right? And so this was a perfect proof case that, yes, we can tackle large, large large implementations.

In fact, this eleven hundred lines at the school district, we’re talking about three hundred about three hundred demarcations or three hundred devices that we’ve set out and everything else. One of their stipulations because we did this deal in mid April, and by the time we, you know you know, get the paperwork going and really kick off the project, let’s just say beginning of May, one of their things was they need to have all of those lines installed and migrated over, you know, before the school next school year. Right. You know, today, before I got on this call, I just wanted to check on the overall status, and we are very close to completing the migration.

And everything that I’ve been hearing is that it’s gone very smooth. Right? Not a surprise because of all the diligence that happened up front. And so, you know, we got brought in a little late.

That being said, we because we got brought in a little late. There was a couple of our our main competitors who had already been in there and and pushing forward trying to, secure the deal. We were able to come in and show some of our capabilities, you know, on a couple fronts. One was, again, back to the fact that Airdial is a device that we actually manufacture.

We we we built it from the ground up specifically for these use cases. We’re specifically for alarms and elevators and things like that. It’s not a, and I wanna be careful here because there’s there’s applications for this. It’s not a multipurpose device for, like, you know, providing Wi Fi or Internet back, you know, bringing that other things.

We actually built this specifically for these use cases.

And I think that gave us a little bit of a capability to kinda go in there and address some of their use cases that they were struggling with from a technology perspective. It’s ours so we can actually we can actually dive into maybe potentially the firmware or the software and and and tweak it as we need to. You know, speaking of software, it was you know, that was another key thing, which I’ll talk about in a moment. But, yeah, this deal was a bake off.

We came in late. We didn’t think we were gonna have much of an opportunity since they were already entrenched in, you know, in looking at others. And I think, I think we showed up, showed up well, and I think we represented very well. I I will say the relationship with the partner, you know, and allowing that door to open and allowing you know?

And and really, in in my mind, giving trust. Right? And so, you know you know, this partner worked with Terry at at, you know, on your side. Terry has known, Ooma for quite a while.

You know, he was also very, very strong advocate as far as, you know, you can trust these guys. And so that that had a lot to help build the credibility and, obviously, yourself too. Right? So Yeah. Yeah.

And I think, you know, one thing to say here, Dave, you you you’re being a little bit like couple of your competitors actually had some test sites in place, and and and they just were not going well. And so this customer was pretty much ready to kinda kick the can down the road given the time frame, but you guys were kinda able to come in and rescue that deal. So I I think, you know, kudos to you, and and just a great solution for that. You know, any last words on that, Dave, as far as the wrapping that up?

I think, you know, what you know, eleven hundred lines don’t come around every day. That’s a big opportunity. But there’s so many of these kind of deals, maybe half that size out there. What do you wanna leave our partners with here as they’re watching this video?

Where to find these opportunities? How to start that conversation with their prospects or customers?

Yeah. Couple things. Let me lay this out first. Right? We we in technology always wanna talk about the tech.

Right? We wanna talk about the speeds and feeds. Right? In in POTS replacement, we’re always talking about the device.

Yeah. You know, the device is just a vehicle. Right? And so let me let me kinda paint this picture.

If I put two laptops in front of you and one’s a Dell and one’s a Lenovo, what’s really the difference? Right? You’re gonna be looking at price, what you know, quality, you know, yada yada. If I put a Dell in front of you and a MacBook in front of you, I’ve changed the conversation.

Right? You know, now we’re talking about the iOS that he’s used to perceive, stability of the device or or of the laptop, etcetera. That’s what we do. With our software, it’s called remote device manager.

That’s in essence what we’re doing. We’re changing the conversation. It’s not about specifically the device itself. It’s about the management capabilities.

Right? It’s the visibility to those POTS lines and those devices. It’s the alerting capabilities. And, you know, when you think of when I said at the top, you know, if we’re bringing pots in the twenty first century, that’s the idea.

Right? Facility managers like this like the folks here at the school district, they want to have that visibility to see what’s going on. You know, is our parts line up? Is is is you know, what’s the battery, levels?

Right? We have to have power continuity, and Ooma AirDial’s forty eight hours. Right? You know, we gotta look at, you know, what’s the LTE signal levels?

You know, one of the one of the things that came across in the competitive landscape on this particular deal was one of the one of the competitors was insisting that they they didn’t wanna necessarily use the WAN as or the the LAN aspect, if I if I remember reading the notes right. And and, you know, we will allow either. If you wanna go LTE as primary, fine. If you wanna go LAN as primary, okay.

And by the way, part of this is also restricted by the municipality and their fire code, that’s something we just have to look at.

But Of course.

But, you know, our our capabilities are there where we can go either. And we had and this was a a strong differentiator for the school, which was multipath transport. So our ability to send those active voice packets over both the routes providing a fail safe scenario for active calls doesn’t have to worry about a failover where you’re waiting for time. It it actually stays up on the other thing.

But this software consider this, and I I hope people listening understand that this is a real significant thing. If I can alert you, if I can send you a text and an email that you’re having issues with your device, like, goes out of service, I. E. Your POTS line’s down or, you know, somebody places a call.

This is very unique to our solution. You know, if somebody presses that elevator button, right, or or emergency call is from an emergency call box. By the way, you know, schools and universities are fantastic with us. One of the universities we did, their blue light phones weren’t always working.

And, you know, we in today’s world, not to go negative, but or or or or do fear selling. I don’t wanna do that. But in today’s world, the reality is those lines need to be operational, in cases of emergencies. So right?

And so the the there’s a ton of things, but having those alerts gives people those kick you know, gives people those insights of what’s happening on that. Now to your point about where to look for these deals, we’re found in five of the top ten retailers, seven of the top ten real estate investment trust. So retail and real estate, you know, makes sense. Right?

You know? So but what I would tell you overall is there’s not a vertical that pots isn’t probably found. It’s just about the size. Right?

You know, if we’re looking for bigger deals, you’re looking for distributed environments. So, again, you know, you look at school districts, you look at municipalities, you look at some of these tanks. Right? But everybody probably has a couple pots lines, so shavings make a pile.

You know? I’ve heard partners say it’s not worth the, pursuit. I I I promise you it is because not just because of the pots line, but because you need to protect your base. Yep.

You need to be having that conversation. I know too many partners that are using it as a Trojan horse, and I know this partly because we educate to do that. Right? Yeah.

Trojan horse. Get in there, land, expand. Right? So you but, you know, again, create a defensive bull work simultaneously.

That POTS tracker tool that I mentioned, that’s pretty significant. A lot of our partners have been leveraging that, you know, to be strategic, to to kinda do that outreach, outreach, to identify where these things are happening. We know for years, we’ve been hearing about it. We don’t always know where it’s happening.

Again, AT and T has been the more vocal, been the more aggressor in in the space, but the others are picking up seem too. And I will also say, again, back to marketing where you’re looking at, keep in mind, I use two thousand thirty as kind of a date, just because twenty twenty nine is when AT and T said they wanted to target all of their shutdowns. So I’m just I’m I’m buffering a year. Right?

But listen. You can always you can always reach out to our channel managers and engage and look at have a demo of the Pots Tracker, see if it’s strategic to your your initiatives. And we can look at how we can, leverage not only Pots Tracker but some of our pre canned campaign kits to do outreach with. Right?

And we’ve done we’ve been known to do customer focused webinars for our partners, you know, where they bring in their base and say, hey. You you might wanna understand what’s going on. This is one of our providers that we work with, etcetera.

And the only other thing I would say wrapped around this isn’t necessarily going to track, you know, attract customers per se, but know that for you, you know, we have pricing models. Right? You know, I think in the beginning, we were perceived as you have to buy you have to do it this way, you have to do it that way, whether it’s, you know, rent the box, buy the box, you know, but it had to be separated, you know, installation options, etcetera. We have pricing models where we can include, full, managed insults.

Right? We have installation options that kinda go across the board, but we have the pricing models to address what the customer needs are. In addition, I’d say one thing with this particular school district, also understand we have a relationship with, like, companies like CareSoft for vehicles, right, for for contract vehicles. So if we need to, we can leverage that.

And we don’t dig our partners on those. Right? We actually provide we keep we we provide our Ooma pricing to, to those vehicles, and then that Ooma pricing is still what you’re getting your residuals and your SPIFFs off of.

Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. So just to wrap up here, Dave, twenty thirty is the date we’re hearing. I you know, based on most of the estimates, there’s fifteen million pots lines still out there. If we do the math on that, what is that? Eight thousand a day we need to con convert.

The numbers are huge.

Get with Ooma. Get with your team. Look at the pods tracker. Make sure your customers aren’t last in line when these things come over. So final word, Dave.

Where can they find the Ooma team when they need you guys?

Oh, well, listen. I mean, you can find it through your Telarus channel manager. That’s the easy route. Right?

You know? And, obviously, you know, we have a lot of materials that go out there. But Ooma dot com is, you know, why you go to that website. You know, you can do an inquiry to try to get it back to us.

But, yeah, go through your Telarus channel managers. These are the guys that have honestly been trying to guide you into the right providers for the right solution for the particular applications you’re looking for.

We were very involved with Telarus. Telarus has been a a a significant partner for Ooma, for for really really the seven years we’ve been, focused on the channel. So Yeah.

Love it. Dave, thanks so much for joining us, man. A lot of great information for our partners here today.

Folks, thank you for tuning in. Make sure you check out all of our Inside the Win episodes that are available via your favorite podcast vehicle or on the Telarus home. Thanks for now. We’ll talk to you soon.