In an article published on the front page of the USA Today newspaper this week it is once again apparent that the days of the telephone land line are numbered. Two states, Indiana and Wisconsin, have already passed legislation to allow phone companies to eliminate land lines. Alabama, Kentucky and Ohio are considering similar legislation.
The phone companies claim that the elimination of the land line system will allow for additional investments in new technologies, while opponents argue that affordable service, will be especially in rural areas, will not be readily available.
For the past several years the alarm industry has known that the days of the landline are numbered and have begun to implement alternate communication strategies, mainly cellular communications through the GSM network. With the addition of cellular communications, you can not only save money by eliminating your home phone line, and thus the monthly phone bill, but these systems actually provide a safer connection to the central station since there are no phone lines outside the building that can be cut and communication is instantaneous. They also have the capability of sending a dual signal, one over the GPRS cellular network, and if that signal is unavailable, the communicator will send a secondary signal as a SMS message.
While many people have begun to switch their home phones over to VoIP through their cable company or other internet providers, these systems are often unreliable and often have trouble communicating with the alarm panel. The failure to communicate can occur when the power goes out and the internet or cable system is temporarily unavailable. The other problem comes with the way the analog data is converted from the alarm panel into digital information packets for the internet so that they can be transported over the VoIP system and then converted from digital information packets back to an analog signal at the central station. When the internet is slow these information packets may be slowed, thus causing a communication failure.
With the coming demise of the land line, Dial One Security will be there to offer our clients the best possible choices for their alarm communications.
