ICYMI, the traditional copper telephone network is being decommissioned, following the path of the telegraph before it. As these networks disappear, demand for the hardware and software that support them is declining too, outside of specialized and legacy applications.
For Sangoma, adapting to changes in telecommunications is nothing new. As stewards of open source technologies including Asterisk, FreePBX, DAHDI, and LibPRI, we’ve helped businesses around the world move from analog POTS to digital VoIP technologies, including SIP phones and trunks.
We’ve been talking about this transition for years on the Sangoma blog:
Who's impacted
With the decommissioning period approaching, now is the time to review the legacy equipment you still depend on.
Check our Sangoma Knowledge Base page, September 2028 End-Of-Life Legacy Product SKU List, and the Sangoma EOL search tool for specific products and timelines. If you still need T1/E1/J1, TDM, PRI, BRI, FXS, or FXO telephony cards, contact sales or visit the Sangoma store to plan ahead.
Legacy connectivity can still be hiding in plenty of places, including:
- Alarm and fire systems
- Elevator callboxes
- Door and gate controls
- Fax machines and dial-up modems
- Card readers and security monitors
- TDM equipment
- Failover systems and 911 backups
- Landline lifelines
For some of these applications, Analog Telephone Adapters (ATAs) like Sangoma Vega equipment and Sangoma FAXStation devices can provide a practical migration path in a small form factor ideal for rapid SMB2E on-prem integrations. Our Sangoma Vega technology is not affected by the recent End-of-Sale and End-of-Life announcements. In fact, they continue to receive regular security and firmware updates. Sangoma also works with manufacturers such as 10T Solutions to integrate Sangoma Vega equipment with 5G LTE cellular and other wireless networks as POTS replacements, helping maintain legacy analog interfaces, while adding new options for improved redundancy and resilience.
Beyond legacy telephony
The retirement of legacy telephony products does not mean Sangoma is exiting the hardware business. Besides maintaining our Vega and FAXStation lines of analog-to-digital telephone and facsimile machine adapters, we’re applying decades of computer-telephony engineering experience to what comes next.
That includes specialized AI and GPU hardware integration designed to accelerate on-premises, hybrid, and cloud AI workloads with LLM-friendly tools like RAGs, MCPs, OFPs, and A2As. Combined with capabilities such as Sangoma Scribe multilingual transcription products, forthcoming vCon enhancements in FreePBX and PBXact, new Asterisk WebSocket and AudioSocket channels, and Sangoma SIP trunking for wholesale and retail, these technologies can help improve Voice AI performance, including latency and speech recognition, while reducing infrastructure costs (due to token spend) and adding redundancy.
We’re also continuing to modernize the foundations of IP communications. For example, the forthcoming FreePBX 18 expands IPv6 support, building on established IPv6 support in Asterisk, and adds modern nftables-based responsive firewalling.
That matters as satellite and other emerging internet providers expand broadband access in rural and underserved areas. Reliable voice connectivity remains critical, particularly where traditional landlines and mobile networks have never provided consistent coverage.
As legacy copper networks fade into history, technologies such as IPv6, satellite broadband, wireless connectivity, and modern IP telephony give us an opportunity to reach places traditional networks have struggled to serve. With the upcoming FreePBX 18 release, expanded IPv6 support and a move beyond CGNAT can help bridge that telecom gap, connecting more people with reliable voice communications in more places.
So yes, we may be retiring a few old trails. But there’s plenty of new territory to round up ahead. 🤠🛰️✨