Copper landlines are going away next year. What does that mean for my alarm system?
Once upon a time, landline communications were on the
cutting edge of technology. By 1890, one percent of all U.S. households had a
phone. By 1957, fully seventy-five percent of U.S. homes had a landline. By
2013, more people in America were using cellphones rather than landlines.
As times have changed, so has technology. On August 8, 2022,
the FCC declared that traditional copper landline phones will all be switched
off by no later than December of 2025. That in itself doesn’t mean that copper
lines will no longer function, but they will be using broadband to make the
call instead of the same technology that was used over a century ago. Many
numbers have already switched. Where this has happened, alarm communications
have failed.
The reason this matters to a security or fire alarm is that,
much like a fax machine, alarm systems use a series of audio tones to
communicate information. When those sounds are transmitted over VOIP, or Voice
Over Internet Protocol, the sounds can become altered to the point where the
Central Monitoring Station can no longer interpret them correctly. This can
cause a whole host of issues, but perhaps the worst of them is that the tones
can be ‘misheard’ in a way that translates to the wrong account number, which
will correlate to a completely different address. When this happens, say in the
case of a fire alarm, not only does the protected premises not get a
fire department response, but a completely different location can get a false
alarm dispatch.
There are many other less obvious reasons not to use a
landline for an alarm system. A landline is completely passive, meaning that
there is no way for the Central Monitoring Station to know at any given time
whether or not the alarm system is actually capable of sending a signal.
Because a landline system must place a call to deliver data to the Central Monitoring
Station, if a system tries, but fails to deliver an alarm message, the only
result will be that the alarm system will sound a trouble signal at the keypad
to let the local occupants know that communications have failed. If nobody is
home, it literally becomes a physical manifestation of the old adage; “If
a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a
sound?”
Another pitfall of landline communications is that by
necessity, a landline alarm system is directly connected to a pair of
conductive copper wires that stretch over literally miles of open ground. If
lightning hits the wires within a mile of the alarm system, the chances are
extremely high that the system will be destroyed. With Cellular communications,
there are no wires to be cut, and there is no vulnerability to electrical
surges.
Perhaps the most germane reason to abandon copper lines in
the modern era is that; in an age of connectivity, copper lines cannot be used
to remotely control a system. Arming and disarming from an app are functions
that require a broadband connection. Because an always-on cellular broadband connection
allows instant, secure two-way data, it can do more than just secure the
premises. A Cellular communicator can provide
a means to turn lights on and off, lock and unlock doors, and even add and
delete user codes with ease from wherever you are at the time.
In summary, Cellular communications are not only the future
of alarm connectivity, they are one of the only remaining reliable means to
achieve it. Considering the relatively inexpensive cost of upgrading to
Cellular as compared to the cost of maintaining a copper landline, the decision
becomes academic.
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by using the contact link below
info@atlanticsecurityinc.com
