MSPs love recurring revenue—but many are walking past a massive source of it every single day without even realizing it. Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) lines may sound like ancient tech, but they’re still out there—running elevator phones, alarm panels, fax machines—and costing businesses a fortune.
We sat down with Kathy Mazza, Head of Channel Sales at Ooma, at a recent channel event to discuss Ooma’s aggressive push into POTS line replacement with its AirDial solution. In Kathy’s words, the opportunity is simple, sticky, and yes—”mailbox money.”
Tell me about the ‘Copper Monster’—what’s that all about?
Mazza: We just started a new campaign and feedback has been very well received. Last year we were going after finance, specifically – the copper monster was eating profits. And so we kind of repurposed it. Nobody thinks about POTS, as we talk about plain old telephone systems, they’ve been installed and nobody’s touched them in twenty, thirty, forty-plus years. And quite honestly, most IT companies, IT directors, and managers aren’t even managing the POTS services anymore. They’re usually just being paid by AP. But now with POTS sunsetting, they have to do something.
We’re hearing from customers every single day that either they’ve gotten the raise rates notice or they are being told they have 30–45 days, the lines will no longer be available. I have heard of cases of POTS line bills of $1800 to $2400.
A channel partner partner can make a huge impact with a customer by offering a modern low-cost solution to replace these expensive outdated services and earn recurring revenue from it.
What does a “Mailbox Money” opportunity mean for MSPs?
Mazza: I never thought that we’d be talking about POTS quite as much as we are again. And we’ve all been doing this for a while and we’re all trying to do sexy things like AI, CX, and security, but this is a huge opportunity. And I would say any partner, whether they’re a national reseller, an MSP, a VAR, or a channel partner, there’s a huge opportunity to turn this into mailbox money.
If you are servicing strip malls, for example, they are going to have an alarm line. If it’s multi floor there could be elevator lines; those just got left behind when we transitioned to UCaaS (unified communications as a service) and VoIP (voice over IP). Whether it was a couple of years ago or even ten to twenty years ago these lines were left behind, and now they are going up. Larger companies have multiple lines going into multiple locations. So, it’s a huge opportunity in addition to our core business. This is where we’ve had a lot of success with the MSP community.
How can MSPs start the conversation with customers? What are you seeing as some urgent use cases?
Mazza: They should all be asking a couple of very simple questions like, “What are you doing for your fire and life safety lines?” Because those have not normally been addressed. It’s just a nice add-on.
We say this to all partners – it’s a very sticky product and it can help them solve a problem. We did a study last, last year and 70-80% of CIOs and VPs of IT know that they have a problem that they have to solve. All business sizes are affected, and so they need help to solve this problem. It becomes sticky and allows the MSP to get in and to sell the entire tech stack.
Another area is fax lines. There’s still long-form faxes that are going on. Plus boiler rooms, elevators, and pool phones are opportunities. Every yeat we get calls coming into Memorial Day weekend where they need us to send something out in 24 hours because otherwise, they can’t open the pool. Why? Because they’re regulated. Ooma can talk the compliance talk. We have assets and marketing materials available to all of our partners to help them start the compliance conversation.
They don’t have to learn all these things themselves, right? Are you empowering your partners and educating them?
Mazza: Absolutely. We can crawl, walk, run, and by the way, this is pretty simple… MSPs have been punching down and working in this low-voltage world for a really long time. We have online certificates and online learning management tools. They can go in, watch a couple of videos, and we can sit in with them for a couple of installations, and then they’re off to the races.
We have partners that literally do a couple of boxes a day across their customer segment. It is nice if you’re displacing another UCcaaS provider or you’ve already got Ooma Office out there with your customer asking these questions—you’re creating more value and you’re tying that customer together longer.
Are you finding that MSPs are surprised at how easy this opportunity is that they weren’t even aware of?
Mazza: So many partners are not seeing the opportunity here, and this is literally mailbox money. These envelopes will just get bigger and bigger month after mont.
And these lines are not going anywhere. They’ve been installed for decades. We are absolutely confident that when Ooma AirDial gets installed, they are going to be there for decades.
What are some of the common questions partners have, and what else should ChannelPro readers know?
Mazza: I want to stress how Ooma has built our UCaaS platform around making it easy for the MSP community to be able to service all sorts of customer segment sizes. We want to provide a turnkey solution and give our partners the opportunity to make that revenue and make that residual revenue.
We’re often asked how we differentiate. I would say that as we talk about POTS replacement, there are very few solutions out there. We differentiate our RDM (remote device management), which is the portal that allows for alerts, as a great inventory asset tool as well because you can identify each of the lines. You can tell the signal strength, and get notifications if it goes off battery – you didn’t get that in the POTS world.
When we talk about our UCaaS office solution, the differentiation is that it is built for non-technical users. We can help our partners look really good by making it simple for them to support their customers.
Are there long-term contracts or can MSPs get in fast?
Mazza: I’m amazed at how many deals where we get notified of an opportunity and they close and then are installed within two weeks. While I would love every MSP and every partner to sign up on a long-term contract, we will sell it month-to-month.
This could be a foot in the door for MSPs, who have become the trusted advisor for all parts of the tech stack. We think that AirDial coming in and POTS replacement is a Trojan horse. It’s easy to be able to go to a customer and say we’re going to save this money and solve an immediate problem, and we’re then going to make it really easy to do, so that you can focus on your core business.
To learn more about Ooma’s AirDial opportunity for MSPs, visit the Ooma’s Channel Partner page.
