[LINK] NBN and personal alarm compatibility

[Kim Holburn]

Serious alarm systems have their own cell phone built in.

On 2013/Aug/13, at 11:56 AM, Paul Brooks wrote:

> On 13/08/2013 11:26 AM, Jan Whitaker wrote:
>> Interesting article about the other sorts of services that hang off 
>> the current phone systems.
>> 
>> http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/government-it/alarms-may-not-work-with-nbn-20130812-hv1cl.html
>> 
>> But if there are analog conversion ports on the termination boxes and 
>> the devices that connect to the analog network now do so 
>> successfully, AND we have been told our analog phones can connect to 
>> one of those ports, why wouldn't this just work?
>> 
>> BTW, I have LOTS of phone outlets in my house. Assuming that in the 
>> 5-6 years still to go before NBN appears at my place (I am definitely 
>> not in the first 3 years of rollout), I'm assuming that my analog 
>> connection end-point would just be moved to connect to one of those 
>> analog ports. Right or wrong?
> Its an issue that has been known and worked on for at least the past several years,
> has been the subject of several reports, and is currently the subject of a Comms
> Alliance workgroup looking at cabling practices.
> 
> 'Standard' houses with standard phone sockets and no special considerations can be
> connected fairly readily so that the existing sockets all should continue to work.
> 
> Alarm systems - both security alarms and personal health alarms - cause two problems.
> 1) some of them use non-standard audio tones (NOT like modems and faxes) which
> apparently have difficulty getting through the G.711 VoIP conversion
> 2) many alarms are connected to a 'mode 3 socket', which has to be connected in a
> special place in the phone-point topology, closest to the first socket/building entry.
> If the NBN box is connected to the existing in-house wring at any random socket, then
> the 'mode 3' function doesn't work any more and the alarm system won't see any
> dial-tone at all - so you need to be careful about how the in-house cabling is
> connected to the NBN NTU
> 3) alarm suppliers are paranoid about non-stop power, and don't like the NBN's battery
> backup, or that consumers might not keep battery backup. If the mains power fails the
> alarm system usualy has a backup battery, but thats not much use if the phone socket
> is dead because the NBN NTU has lost power.
> 
> If you're interested further see
> http://commsalliance.com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/23957/NBN-End-User-Premises-Handbook---Release-2-Jun10.pdf
> for an early look at home cabling issues, that also discusses alarm systems.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Paul.
> 
> 
> 
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> Link at mailman.anu.edu.au
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-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
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