Life after PSTN Monitoring

Wade Coneybeer, Alarm Watch General Manager and NZSA Board Member, discusses the phasing out of the PSTN and what it means for alarm unit selection.

After decades of a love-hate relationship between Security Alarms and the Public Switched Telephone Network, it finally approaches the end.

Spark announced in June 2018 that it had already removed 62 of the 482 Automated Telephone Switches and set the goal to remove two more each week for the 12-month period that followed.

There are varied opinions out there, but the consensus is that your best bet is to move your monitored alarms off the aging copper network, sooner, rather than later.

Wade Coneybeer, Alarm Watch General Manager

This isn’t a new predicament, our industry was first invited to a briefing in 2007 by the then Telecom, warning that the PSTN was going to be phased out. Most industry vocalists have been ringing the warning bells since that meeting, so you are more than likely to already have your options in play.

Apart from radio transmission, one of the first options was to utilise a phone port on the customer’s modem or install a VOIP adapter to emulate the DTMF tones, but this was not always successful due to traditional alarm receivers being very unforgiving when it comes to the tones they require to successfully exchange information. These connections infamously work one day, and not the next.

Soon after, and still to this day, came a slow wave of addon modules. Retrofitting alarms with a device that neither replicates DTMF tones nor utilises the traditional alarm receiver, but rather works by picking up the message from the alarm’s dialler, converting it to data and sending it via the customer’s internet or the Cellular Data Network.

IP units that connect the alarm directly to the customer’s modem were very popular, initially. On first thought, this appeared to be the cheapest option as you didn’t have to pay for a SIM card, but it didn’t take long to work out that it came at a higher cost unless the customer had a managed network.

Integrators were doing repeat visits to customers to get connections back online and Monitoring Operators were hassling clients about lost connections, all because the customer was touching their modem or had lost power. The success rate is higher for commercial clients with managed networks, but don’t forget to add on some time to your quote to cover working with their IT team.

The most popular option is using a device that connects to the Cellular Data Network - the beauty of these units is that the monitoring is not reliant on the customer’s internet or modem, nor is it accessible to be interfered with in any way. Most units are powered by the alarm system and backup battery, so the customer is protected during power outages.

There are various brands of these units and they are all popular for their own reasons. The best way to identify the most suitable unit for your clients is to bench test them yourself. Some are cheaper, some have more bells and whistles, such as upload/download, and most have their own supplier smartphone app or web portal for management, diagnostics and remote operation.

I cannot say if the PSTN will, or when it will, completely shut down - but I do believe existing customers still utilising the copper landline should be warned - and if you have the chance, wouldn’t it be nice to stagger the upgrades, rather than get the calls last-minute, like those install requests on Christmas Eve?

Something as simple as using a website like MailChimp to do an e-mail newsletter or including a note on your invoices about the required upgrade could save you the panic. Don’t push this as bad news. This is an upgrade that comes with cool new features, higher security, faster transmission and possibly the ability to arm/disarm via smartphone.

As I mentioned earlier, this is not a new problem and our Alarm Watch Bureau numbers indicate that the industry is getting there slowly. We only have 40 percent of connections left using the PSTN and only 15 percent of our new connections in 2019 were connected using phone lines. We are getting there! The days of the Telecom guy blaming the alarm guy and the alarm guy blaming the Telecom guy are nearly over…. nearly.

20 questions to consider when choosing the right module:

1. Do you require upload/download?

2. Do you have to (or want to) manage the SIM Card?

3. What polling plans are available and at what cost?

4. Can you use the customer’s internet connection as a backup path via ethernet and/or wifi?

5. Does the supplier’s smart app cost each month?

6. Does the unit have 4G?

7. Can you easily check cellular reception?

8. Can you ‘ping’ the unit remotely?

9. Can you see the polls from the unit?

10. Will the poll reset the monitoring station’s “No Signal” alert?

11. Can the customer set/unset from a smart app?

12. Can the unit be used with different networks or is it locked to one?

13. Does the unit or the receiver kiss off the panel?

14. How many inputs and outputs does the unit have?

15. What does it cost to buy?

16. How easy is it to activate a new unit?

17. Can the unit ignore the account number from the panel?

18. Does the unit have Dual Path available?

19. Does the network supplier warn you of outages?

20. Is the communication path sufficiently secure for your client’s needs? i.e. Private secure network with encryption vs public internet.