Change to fibre and home alarm system

[davidbalerno]

Just been advised my date for change to fibre phone. My house security alarm has a speech dialler to call me when the alarm goes off. Checked with my security alarm local provider and been quoted £266 for upgrade to a GSM dialler. Why is this necessary? My alarm system does not appear to be connected by wire to the Virgin landline or the hub. My wireless handsets will presumably still work so why not the dialler?

[BenMcr · Accepted solution]

How does the speech dialler work then? If it's not physically connected to your home phone line, how does it make the call?

The difference between your current line and the Fibre Phone is that it requires your Hub to be powered in order to work. So if there is a failure of the Hub for any reason, then anything connected to your home phone line can't make or receive calls.

If your alarm system connects to the mobile phone network instead of a fixed line, it can continue to dial any programmed numbers in the event of a power failure in your home or tampering to disable your Hub (as long as the local mobile networks are still active).

[Travis_M]

Hi @davidbalerno

Thanks for posting on our community forum and I hope you're having a great day. 

We're unable to comment on why the dialler will not be able to work, if any 3rd party equipment is unable to work with our service we'd need you to contact the manufacturer to discuss a suitable solution regarding this, all of our customers are being switched over to 21CV so some landline setups will need adapting to the change as the older equipment might not be capable of connecting to the new fibre phone.

My apologies for any inconvenience this may cause. 

Regards

[davidbalerno]

Thanks for reply BenMcr. Not sure how the dialler connects, I have asked my local installer to explain to me, will update when I hear back.

[davidbalerno]

Update to BenMcr - I stand corrected, here is the response from my alarm installer: 

Your V2TEL speech dialler is connected to the Virgin Master socket in your hall so it uses your phone line to call out to your programmed numbers. Unfortunately this technology needs an analogue phone line so isn’t compatible with the new Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) systems that fibre changeover provides. Your phone will plug straight into the back of your broadband router when the changeover is made. The 2 options for replacing the V2TEL use either the mobile phone networks or your WiFi so there will be no need for a physical connection from the alarm to the equipment in the study. Of course, your alarm will still work as an ‘audible only’ system but that’s not ideal if you like the peace of mind of getting a phone call / notification. 

So I will have to pay over £300 inc VAT for a compatible wifi speech dialler or buy a smartphone and use an app for notifications, still awaiting costs for an app service (this assumes my neighbour who receives my alarm notifications if I cannot respond has a smartphone and is willing to pay too).

Not very happy.

[goslow]

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@davidbalerno wrote:

Update to BenMcr - I stand corrected, here is the response from my alarm installer: 

<snip>

Not very happy.

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This query often crops up on here. May not be quite the disaster scenario you might be imagining but ...

To clarify, VM's landline-via-router is not actually a VOIP service in its present format. VM refer to it as 21CV - 21st century voice.

Customers connect a standard landline phone into a specific port (TEL1) on the VM hub and the phone line behaves in a similar way as if connected to a conventional landline.

The big difference is that the landline-via-router requires the VM hub to be working in order to dial out.

In the case of a power cut, for example, the landline will not work and your alarm system would not be able to dial out if triggered.

VM should offer to modify your home phone wiring (free of charge as part of the switchover) so that your phone extension connections (inc. the extension connection to the alarm) are linked to the new dedicated TEL1 socket on the back of the VM hub.

Under most circumstances, the alarm will dial out when triggered, unless the VM hub is offline for some reason.

All telecoms providers are making this switchover, not just VM, and the national target date for completion is end of 2025. It has been stated on here before that VM's target to complete the current arrangements is the end of 2023. Beyond that (presumably) they will be looking at a true VOIP solution. BenMcr should be able to provide the correct/official information about this.

So the current situation is that your alarm should be able to be connected to the VM hub right now and it should work but with the limitations above. In the medium to long term you should look at converting the alarm to a mobile connection.

You should check/confirm the above with your alarm installer in regards to your particular alarm system.

[grunkp]

David. The new Virgin phone system is NOT VOIP. It is called 21CV and is similar to that used by BT. It is a more modern analogue type of system

Virgin should come and install (you may need to request an engineers visit) a phone type cable from your Router to your Virgin Master Socket so that  your existing phone equipment still works. In some cases there may be issues with older types of telephone equipment not working due to the methods used for dialling out, but I would think that your modern security alarm call out system should not have an issue .

The only times it will not work are when there is a power cut and/or your internet goes down. If it is a large area power cut you may find that smartphones will not work as the local phone masts do not usually have backup power units.

Trust this makes sense.

[goslow]

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@grunkp wrote:

<snip>

The only times it will not work are when there is a power cut and/or your internet goes down. If it is a large area power cut you may find that smartphones will not work as the local phone masts do not usually have backup power units.

<snip>

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Certainly worth recognising this possibility. During the last power cut I experienced (admittedly a very big one which shutdown most of south-east England for several hours) most comm's were knocked out altogether. Even the alarm dial-out-via-mobile option would probably not have worked under this set of circumstances.

[davidbalerno]

Many thanks goslow, I will pass this on to my installer as it may change their advice to me.

[davidbalerno]

Thanks for this grunkp, will pass this info to my installer and contact VM for confirmation/engineer.