New 10 digit dialing problems

All my panels dial a toll free number. No problem.

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I discovered this problem back in the late 80's, when I lived in New York. We decided then to only use 800 numbers from then on, and ended that problem once and for all. With the super low cost of toll free numbers these days, there is no excuse for all dealers to do the same.

Jim Rojas

BC experienced that headache a few years ago, Bob. In fact, I came across an 832 panel that was still dialing seven digits a few months ago (it was a fire alarm system communicator, no less). We got called in because the Nimrod security company doing the monitoring figured it was the fire alarm system's fault that their system wasn't communicating troubles or daily tests (for the last two years!). I hooked up my butt set to listen to what I thought was going to be some form of garbled communication and lo and behold... the panel only dialed seven digits... Doh!!! The customer wound up switching to our service...

Practical or not, it has to be done. An alarm company would be exceedingly negligent if it failed to reprogram its systems (or install another type of transmitter), knowing full well that those systems could not possibly communicate with the central station. Especially if they keep cashing the checks after the changeover date.

Using 800 numbers prevents all kinds of problems, especially when area codes get split.

However, nobody said the alarm companies have to do the changes for free. It isn't the alarm company's fault that the phone company is changing a policy that's been in effect for over 50 years.

I don't know what governmental oversight there is in Canada. You may be able to get more time, either from the phone company or from the regulatory agency. It's not just alarm systems, there are a ton of credit card machines and other equipment that may need to be reprogrammed. Hopefully, CANASA was on top of this from the beginning.

- badenov

We hired extra people for it and the during those 12 months, both 7 digit dialing and 10 digit dialing would work.

You are lucky you only have 1000 accounts. If you do 5 a day, you should be able to do them all within a year. It's ugly, especially trying to get people to stay home waiting for you to show up just to re-program the phone number, but got to do it.

We had to do it here in the early 90's, when I worked for a high-end resi Westec dealer with about 4000 non-downloaded accts, consisting of about 1000 Westec systems and 3000+ various other brands. I think the number of systems affected was at least 1500, since the high-end Western suburbs and the outlying rural areas were getting the new area code. The owner had started years earlier and used every panel at one time or another, before buying the local Westec franchise (when it was still very well engineered stuff, albeit proprietary). Running service for that outfit was a real adventure... ;-) DTI-550 or 665, anyone? Learned a lot, though. Burned a Boatload of 693 PROMs.

Changing the programming in all those systems was a royal freaking pain, and involved about 18 months of extra service calls by installers and service techs alike...something like 1 or 2 per day per tech., in addition to their regular work. We sent the Silent Knight/Napco guy on those, the Ademco/DTI guy on those, etc. I think we charged $75 per acct... and sent a letter in advance explaining the need to re-program. The service scheduler would map several in an area, and let the installers have a few while they were close. Several customers with simpler systems were able to do it with a tech over the phone at no charge. (tested afterward, of course) There was a 2 yr grace period in which the old 7 digit numbers still worked, so that helped.

By the time the phone company did it to us again in '96, I had started my own company and programmed ALL my systems to dial 10 digit numbers, even for local calls, so the area code addition didn't affect us.

You can't dictate a string of numbers for the client to punch in at the keypad?

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exceedingly

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hmmmmmm, methinks Bobby smells some easy takeovers...

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Quite right Mike ! I knew this was in the plans some 15 years ago when I worked for Bell, so I have always programmed 10 digits into the dialer. My comments were more in regard to the thousands of panels out there that have been taken over by the Borg through aquisitions. At the time when they bought the old VSN accounts these all had 7 digit numbers (they even had to make special arrangements to refer the numbers to their station at the time). I suspect that "Big Blue" will have a major problem with this unless they have some sort of contingency plan in place; otherwise, they will have many thousands of customers with no functional alarm panels, and who will never know it, since they won't show failures to communicate. And you can't communicate with V3 DSC 1550 panels without the special version of software that they may or may not have.Takeovers though? That is steady and goes without saying...

I was looking for real life experiences in areas where this has happened in the past. I have seen local interviews with one of the larger independant companies in the area where they were complaining of the huge volume of work they need to do as a result of the change (roughly 5000 accounts)

Not often I feel sorry for the Borg....

RHC

Problem is, we've known about this for many years but most companies I think have waited until the last minute to address things. From 17 June through next October, 7 digit dialing will work, but if you dial 7 digits, you'll also get Bell answering the phone before the call goes through telling you to dial 10 digits, so this will screw up the dialers unless they have been changed by the earlier date.

RHC

We went through area code splits and additions several years ago here. It was minor chaos...not too bad though as we had ample warning. We had about a year to make the transition, then when several big companies freaked out the phone company granted us another 6 months. I estimated that it cost us about

20K in labor to do the reprogramming - I had one guy on full time doing remote programming, and I spent a good 4-5 hrs a day doing remotes from the office and then at night from home too. I got a LOT of them done at night. The older panels, and some panels that we couldn't remote program we had to send techs out. We did not charge for remote programming (duh), nor did we charge for onsite programming as long as we could do it during normal business hours. We DID charge if the client had to have onsite done on weekends or at night, but we only charged a 35 buck trip charge, but still it was an incentive.

During the whole adventure I made the investment of owning my own 800 lines permanently forwarded into my CS.

We had well over 1000 accts and made the deadline ok.

I don't feel sorry for them at all. It wasn't just Bell folk privy to this, I knew about it before I met you. I remember hearing about this happening elsewhere and dialling a 7 digit number using the area code 10 freaking years ago and it rang.... f****ng d'uh, why wouldn't I program them with 10 digits? What we have to worry about is idiots giving up their landlines. This upcoming generation that like those things glued to the ears just seem oblivious to things like talk battery. Good Lord, man! I sound like my dad. Arggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhh

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A few years ago, ADT in the US undertook a project to eliminate bridge sites and their assoicated forwarded phone numbers. At one time each ADT district had an individual central station. As technology evolved, these centrals were regionalized and then nationalized resulting in the need to forward signals of the older systems to the national monitoring centers. The exisitng local central stations were converted to bridge sites. Eventually these bridge sites were eliminated. A technican was dispatched to every single account to reprogram the panels to dial an 800 number, so it has been done before on a much larger scale than anything you have up north of the border. I'm not sure about ADT Canada. The project may have extended to all of North America.

Unfortunately, ADT never finished the job. They ended up losing 250,000+ accounts due to funding problems. ADT was using subcontractors to accomplish this on a national scale. This happened around the time their former CEO was indicted on tax evasion.

Jim Rojas

Yup I knew a few businesses that were going like gangbuster's on that stuff then ADT cut it off halfway through.

The CEO was from Tyco tho not ADT no?

In the biz world, there is no difference. They are all one big happy family. :)

Jim Rojas

One of the suits just left ADT and went to Vonage.

| > Jim Rojas | | Yup I knew a few businesses that were going like gangbuster's on that stuff | then ADT cut it off halfway through. | | The CEO was from Tyco tho not ADT no? | |

I know Slink walked away from about 7,000 accounts down in Dade and Broward County, Florida when they didn't make the dead line. ADT was working off of an ooooooolllllllddddd customer list when they were out there changing things over. I have a medical facility, that at that time, had been my customer for about 4 years. I knew the previous company had sold to Huizinga, who sold to Slink, who sold to ADT. They came in to change over to

10 digit dialing. I would say they were working off of a bad list. If they had a current one, they might have got more done instead of chasing non customers.