Alarms over VOIP

[Sally2000]

BT, Virgin etc are going to phase out their old phone lines and move all phones to VOIP over broadband, by 2025.
I was wondering how this might affect monitored alarms, as the connection will be less reliable than the old copper pair that needs no power supply.

Broadband connections don't seem to be totally reliable, and in the house it's going to rely on the standard cheap broadband modem with its vulnerable power lead working 24/7. And of course no mains supply failure.

How will the alarm companies deal with this? Are there going to be lots more tamper alarms?

 

[secureiam]

firstly ATS alarms are generated with the panel cant communicate out.

secondly unless you have UPS back up for your router then any device that relies on mains power only will fail during a power cut.

GSM/GPRS can be powered from the alarm panel but you probably want to look at what support these devices have ie 2G,3G,4G etc.....

some manufacturers appear to be prepared and others seem less prepared or at the very least keeping quiet about how they are to tackle the issue.

As the count sown approaches we should see last minute products being released.

So for example an Agility 3/4 panels can use its gsm mobile for text, voice and gprs and it can use grps when the roiuter fails sp can be done on pat as you go, where people have poor gsm signal, the gprs function will be almost iimpossible to use.


this may be a big question this year at security events about what is in the pipeline, I know some have plans but these may change.

Cracking question Sally.

 

[aptsys]

Every proper VoIP solution includes at least 24 hours battery backed supply at the customer endpoint.

The main issue will be the reliability IMO.

 

[secureiam]

not for the average domestic I bet has 24 hr backup????
as for signalling over voip it can be done.

 

[Sally2000]

It doesn't bother me personally because my alarm uses GSM to notify me and a neighbour.

But I'm thinking of the professional monitored alarms. Surely they can't just be connected to a standard domestic modem plugged into a wall socket? That modem can be accessed remotely, or by anyone on the local network. It won't have a UPS and would need quite a big one to operate for many hours.

Do the broadband street cabinets have UPS?

 

[secureiam]

There are options and these will no doubt be changing over the coming years to continue dual path, but some will be broadband plus gsm/gprs, but that can't be doen everwhere at the minute.

 

[aptsys]

not for the average domestic I bet has 24 hr backup????
as for signalling over voip it can be done.

All the residential BT FTTH with VoIP that I've attended to have. The battery backup unit is quite small as not much power required.

 

[aptsys]

It won't have a UPS and would need quite a big one to operate for many hours.

Do the broadband street cabinets have UPS?

They do and the cabinets also have a UPS

 

[scott1980]

Most decent alarm companies will recommend a dual path signalling device that uses GPRS or other wireless transmission methods as its primary communication path. It's very rare that we ourselves use anything less than a single path GPRS device, but most use combined GPRS/IP these days. Signalling companies have been trying to swerve alarm installers away from PSTN for a number of years.

We do see an increase in IP path failures compared to the old PSTN units but it's to be expected as the IP path is being polled a lot more often than PSTN would ever be.

I'd expect phone line failure (deliberate line cuts) to be more of an issue, in which case PSTN and IP are in the same boat.