VONTAGE

RHC: Yeah, I've had loads of clients come to me with VoIP service and they never want to understand that this service is unreliable with an alarm. So their next step is to call another company who doesn't give a shit, and hooks them up anyway just for the money. It almost seems dealers who do the right thing are punished by the scummy ones who don't care about anything other than that monthly RMR. And if you try to sell the client on the proper IP connecting device, they won't spend a dime on it.....

Although it might be hard to swallow at times, you are doing the right thing !! And if they care that little about the alarm, then the hell with them....you're better off getting rid of them

You are correct. They said the had not turned the system on in over a year. Its a 2-300K house. I did not put the system in but it only had 5 zones. Some builder put a cheep alarm in . If i remember most all the doors were on two zones. I told them we could upgrade and make it work on a ip or radio but they didn't want to spend a dime. CHEEP

RHC: Yeah, I've had loads of clients come to me with VoIP service and they never want to understand that this service is unreliable with an alarm. So their next step is to call another company who doesn't give a shit, and hooks them up anyway just for the money. It almost seems dealers who do the right thing are punished by the scummy ones who don't care about anything other than that monthly RMR. And if you try to sell the client on the proper IP connecting device, they won't spend a dime on it.....

Although it might be hard to swallow at times, you are doing the right thing !! And if they care that little about the alarm, then the hell with them....you're better off getting rid of them

I have been putting customers on IP communicators often enough lately. A couple a month either going celluarl or IP. I have had one know it all who refused to listen to me about using VOIP, but she was not being monitored anyway. She just wanted to monitor because they were going to take a long vacation. THose kind usually cancel the instant they get back or after their third past due notice.

I keep sending those customers to Mark.

Compile valid published information and send it to them...and of course include the more expensive alarm monitoring solutions....IP monitoring, Cell, etc.

Any idea what Shaw's digital phone service is? Aparently it's not VoIP.

We've had a couple of customers switch to it and haven't had any problems so far. And the Shaw techs seem to know more about how not to mess up a line seizure phone connection than Telus does. They just take Telus' incoming line off and replace it with theirs, not bothering to "fix" this strange connection they don't understand.

- Chris

Had a older customer with a big old mansion switch to comcast and of course weekly test did not go thru so I went over and explained as best i could why it would not work reliably even after i corrected the wiring and even put the butt set on line so they could here what was going on . explained how uplink worked and how it gave even better protection and they switched over. but the big difference between this customer and most is they understand what a security system is doing for them and they are worried about a fire. Needless to say she was extremely upset with comcast that they never explained difference in phone line nor asked her to test her system before they left leaving her unprotected for the week.

I got rid of all my cheap ass peice of shit customers years ago and kept my customers who are informed and educated and understand the value of there systems it makes things so much easier when technology changes as I try to keep everyone informed and my customers often call me with tech questions on allkinds of stuff not just alarms. I realize im a small one man shop and not everyone has this luxury but it sure as hell was worth losing money initially but actually making more in the end after getting rid of the crap and keeping the quality customers who were wsting my time and taking away from my good paying customers.

Has anyone run in to the small rural phone companies bringing the copper from the homes to one location and then piping the signal over the internet? I seem to have a lot of customers in rural areas with missed test timers and open/close signals.

"CH®IS" a écrit dans le message de groupe de discussion :

Shaw use the same technology that Videotron here in Quebec, it is some sort of IP phone, but its on its own network till it hit the border between the provider and the rest of the world..

They call it digital service, they have almost no compression 64 kbit/s data rate wich is what normal telephone company use to transfert communication on hard line..

If you look closely at Vonage advertising they make the disclamer that their service may not be compatable with alarms and other devices. You might be able to print something out from their web site to show to your customers when they ask.

We had this problem with Cablevision a number of years ago. It took over a year when subscribers found out that their alarm systems weren't working and had to pay their alarm companys to rehook the alarm and complaining to Cablevision, for them to meet with the alarm associations to learn how to make the proper connections. The associations had been trying to get Cablevision "informed" for quite some time. But it wasn't until they started to get complaints and cancellations that they finally paid attention. The associations helped them set up classes for their technicians and provided them with old alarm panels and mock telephone line connections so that they would know what to do in the field.

The techs are "supposed to" have the consumer test the alarm system before they leave the premises .... but that doesn't always happen. We have relatively fewer problems now, as compared to the beginning of VoIP in this area. The one thing they haven't learned is that when you back feed the telephone line to an alarm panel, it will still sense the telephone line so it wont show telco fail, but it can't dial out when the line seizure relay flips. So if they don't test the system before they leave .......

RHC: Yeah, in all honesty, things have improved a bit around our area too. Mostly it's the Cable company employees who have finally learned to set up the alarm on their system properly (probably because Rogers Cable fines them $40 if they receive a complaint about an alarm that doesn't work after they've been in). And since the cable phone doesn't leave their cable network and go out on the internet, the connection is as reliable as a land line. I've had more than one call me on my cell to actually ask me how to set things up (if a telephone guy ever called, I think I would faint from amazement....:))

The phone company use a lot of poorly trained subcontractors who really don't care about the alarm and this ends up causing me a great deal of unnecessary service work to fix the system afterwards. Nor have we (the local dealers) found a way to bill the phone company in a way that works. I refuse to bill my customers since it's not their doing and they end up being caught in the middle of the disputes....

I must say, it did take the Cable guys awhile to figure out they have to connect to the "red and green" rather than the "black and yellow" pairs though....:))

It is VOIP. It uses a cable modem at the subscriber's premise. The modem has a small stand by battery that's good for about four hours (or so the tech I talked to said). If the phone line is mission critical you definitely need a UPS. Some municipalities won't allow it for use on a fire alarm system (even with GSM as a backup).

Sounds like what Cox Cable uses here...Arris Touchstone box and we've had very little problems running alarms through them. The box only has 4 AA battery backup (they say 8 hrs, but probably half that). I have only one client who's box locks up once in a while, but she knows to reset it when she sees Telco Trouble on the keypad.

The biggest problem with these things is they install them ANYWHERE in the house (like under the kids bed) and then back feed the house from there on the SNI's copper. PITA.

Cox swears it's a POTS line, but I seriously doubt it.

It's not. It's VOIP from the premises to the cable company head end, then it gets relayed to a PRI, where it does become more like POTS.

At least the VOIP portion does not traverse the public Internet (unlike Vonage et. al).

thought so...especially when they told me they can vary the telco line voltage out of that box..I figured they were simulating something there.

The way it was explained to me is that with the cable-style voip the packets are sent in a more linear fashion so there aren't minor errors on the other end like there is with vonage.

I haven't a clue so whether its true or not is beyond me.

That may be true. I've heard they dedicate a portion of the bandwidth that is separate from data used by the devices plugged into the home router.

What makes phone offerings by cable companies better than 3rd parties is no Internet routing is necessary. All the VOIP packets are restricted to the home adaptor, and the cable co's router. They never end up on the Internet.

where can I learn more about this particular kind of setup?

Question: Is Digital Phone a VoIP service? Answer: While Digital Phone is an IP-based telephony service, unlike most Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers, it is managed over Time Warner Cable?s private IP network so customers? calls never touch the public Internet.

Consistent call quality is a big factor in nearly all the VoIP reviews we read. Cable VoIP has the edge here, since cable companies route calls over their own networks. Traditional VoIP uses public Internet and is more subject to problems from crowded bandwidth. International calls and calls during peak hours can have glitches like echoes and dropped calls.