Case Study: JCPenney achieves multimillion-dollar telecom savings and resilient, modern voice services with MetTel's POTS Transformation

JCPenney Transitions Legacy Phone & Alarm POTS Lines to Next-Generation Digital Voice Service

JCPenney, a national retailer with 650+ stores and 50,000 associates, faced rising costs and service loss as carriers retired traditional copper POTS lines. With roughly 5,000 specialty phone and alarm lines across 660 stores that were incompatible with standard VoIP, JCPenney needed a way to modernize communications without replacing existing equipment. They selected MetTel’s POTS Transformation service to address this challenge.

MetTel implemented its fully managed POTS Transformation—bridging legacy analog systems to cloud-based voice over broadband, Wi‑Fi, or 4G LTE (with dual‑SIM and multi‑carrier failover) and providing wireless backup for continuity. The project converted more than 5,000 telephone and alarm lines across all 660 stores without equipment replacements, is projected to save millions annually in recurring telecom costs, improved network intelligence and resiliency for critical systems, and gave JCPenney single‑vendor visibility via the MetTel Portal.

JCPenney

Colby Grueber

Senior Director, Technology Enterprise Services