If you call for help, will you be heard? Your home security system may not be as effective as you think, if you use a VOIP service for your phone calls.
According to a news report today, some homeowners are discovering (presumably the hard way, with a break-in and theft), that VOIP is incompatible with their home security systems. An alarm call may not get out — and not be answered.
It’s an alarming thought…
But this VOIP incompatibility with some security systems is not a brand new issue, nor is it one that’s just been discovered.
As early as last summer Yahoo Tech’s Robin Raskin attempted to give a “definitive answer on home security systems and Internet telephones” and pointed her readers to Irwin Lazar’s article, “VOIP & Home Security Systems“:
[Irwin Lazar] points to three reasons why VoIP is not a very good telephone system choice if you have a home security system. First, the alarm system needs to be able to take over the phone line in the case of an emergency, even if that phone has been left off the hook. Harder to do when your phone line is your broadband connection. Then there’s the issue of backup power. If your router has no backup power system then an outage means it can’t relay the alarm. And finally, according to Lazar, the tones in the alarm may not be processed correctly over VoIP.
The incompatibility between VOIP and alarm systems can arise because almost 90 per cent residential alarm systems operate on conventional phone lines, as David Currie, with the Canadian Security Association, told CBC News.
“When you try and marry that kind of equipment to the newer technology, there’s many problems that arise there. Some days it will work, other days it may not work,” he said.
The bottom line?
If you’re thinking of changing your phone service over completely from landline to VOIP, Currie says he would “strongly urge” that you consider changing your alarm communications over to internet or cellular reporting, rather than taking your chances on a happy marriage of alarm system and VOIP technology.
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