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. Please feel free to inquire about our services by using the contact link below