more comments on central station technical errors can't keep up with technology June 26, 2025

KEN KIRSCHENBAUM, ESQ
ALARM - SECURITY INDUSTRY LEGAL EMAIL NEWSLETTER / THE ALARM EXCHANGE
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more comments on central station technical errors can't keep up with technology
June 26,  2025

more comments on central station technical errors can't keep up with technology from article on May 28, 2025

Ken
   With respect to using dial up for alarms here are my comments, and yes as usual this is a long one.
   1, Using dial up for anything, regardless of what format you are going to be sending is prone to errors and problems because of the nature of how compression and VoIP is being implemented. In many cases because of in band vs out of band DTMF signaling CID (Contact ID) is actually worse than pulse or FSK formats but they ALL are prone to errors or problems including but not limited to signals on the wrong account numbers, transmission errors or wrong codes etc. Do your best to get off dial up and onto another technology.
   2, Contact ID is no longer a consistent standard, its usage has been bastardized by many manufacturers over the years. So, the same code is used differently by different vendors and manufacturers, the concept of standardization left the chat a long time ago. So that means monitoring centers need to know what’s at the site and in many cased the firmware rev to get it right. It’s up the installation companies to get the correct information to the monitoring centers since they know exactly what is being installed and how its programmed.
   3, Contact ID , SIA , Serial 3, etc has served the industry for many years, decades actually, but its time to move beyond this in order to get richer and more meaningful data to a monitoring center. With this use of APIs , network communication and other highspeed modes there is no excuse not to start to expand what is being sent to monitoring centers. I urge all vendors and manufacturers to look beyond simple event codes and points to what is in the future, if the industry doesn’t the outside will.
   Ok, off soapbox and have a great day.
Morgan Hertel, VP of Technology and Innovation
Rapid Response Monitoring
877 553 4531

another comment

Ken,
   In response to Anon's 4-2 central station issue:
   When using dialup (VOIP) for alarm transmission, I have noticed a there is sometimes an echo of the data that was sent while I monitored the call progress. This is due to a poor bandwidth connection or possibly a sampling rate issue in the analog to digital converter the phone modem uses to send the signal via IP. You might experience something similar to this on a cell phone call when you get a bad signal and every word you say is echoed back to you on your phone. It's not the exactly the same thing but, pulsed alarm data does get "echoed" back sometimes. The 4-2 format using either 10, 20 or higher pulse rates per second and possibly using a 1400HZ or 2300HZ tone to send the data can experience this echo that can make the central station receiver hang up not issuing the kiss off tone. This causes long reporting delays as now the panel has to re-dial the receiver to make another transmission attempt. Sometimes the echo can cause the central station receiver to get the wrong digits meaning account number 4141 might show up as 4343 and the condition code might get altered as well. This can happen even with a dual transmission of 4-2 where the receiver gets two rounds of that 4-2 signal to verify it received the transmission correctly but, it showed up twice as a matching transmission to the receiver which made it believe it has good data when in fact it does not.
   I have seen this same thing with contact ID sent on VOIP. Some years back we had been using dialup to relay signals from alarmnet to the central station. So, it was an alarmnet communicator at the premise that took the alarm panels contact ID signal that was sent back to alarment then, alarmnet would dial up the central station receiver and relay the contact ID signal transmission. On a rare occasion, there were issues with another account that was receiving false fire alarm dispatches for an undefined signal at the central station. Fire alarm account 7205 was sending in signals that were being interpreted at the central station as fire alarm account 7011. There was actually a point during a system text where I could send in signals from 7205 and see it show up as garbled data on 7011 but, not all the time. There must have some echo or audio frequency shifting issues during the dial up relay that changed the touchtones of the contact ID signal causing the receiver at the central station to see it as account 7011. It was the distortion of the rapid touchtone audio frequencies of the contact ID signal via the VOIP communications method that was causing the problem. Once we switched the transmission method using dialup from alarmnet to the central via internet to an internet receiver at the central station, all those issues stopped. The problem is you cannot send 4-2 that way. The real bottom line is that 4-2 is a very old and very outdated means of transmission and the VOIP is not reliable for alarm transmission even with 4-2, contact ID or any of the modem formats.
   Remember that the V in VOIP stands for voice, not data. Work on your customer to update the panel with a cellular communicator and use a central station that has internet receivers. If you continue to use VOIP expect problems. You will still find customers that refuse to update their alarm systems and you need to remind them that the central stations ability to receive that alarm signal is at best 50/50 as compared to a cellular transmission.
Ron Baumann, CFPS, NICET IV
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Response
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   Thank you both for sharing your expert advice.
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Ken Kirschenbaum,Esq
Kirschenbaum & Kirschenbaum PC
Attorneys at Law
200 Garden City Plaza
Garden City, NY 11530
516 747 6700 x 301
ken@kirschenbaumesq.com
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