Telecommunication Issues

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell started his fledgling telephone company in the basement of an alarm company. The alarm industry predates the telephone industry by about a decade.  Previous to the invention of the telephone, alarm companies strung wires across rooftops from banks and jewelry stores back to their central monitoring station to send alarm signal information.  Ironically, the earliest telephone conversations ran on the alarm company wires that were strung along those rooftops.  City officials eventually put a stop to that practice.

The telephone company grew at an exponential rate eventually dwarfing the size of the alarm industry.  They installed their own telephone poles and strung wires on them. For the next 100 years, the alarm industry used those telephone company wires to send their alarm signals.

While the origins of the alarm and telephone industries are intimately intertwined, they have long since been diverging at an ever-widening gap. The alarm industry’s interests became totally subject to the marketplace needs of the telecommunications industry.

Thus, when it comes to using the services and products of the telecommunications industry, the alarm industry cannot effectively set its own agenda but must reset to change in the telecommunication environment.  The Alarm Industry works with the FCC and Congress to mitigate these changes whenever possible. 

How We Came To Rely on POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service)
The concept of transmitting alarms from protected premises to a central station changed little from its inception until well into the mid-1970s.  Basically, it was driven by Ohm’s Law with a copper wire rented from the telephone company between the customer’s location and a central station. There were some innovative attempts at telephone line security, with multiplexing and even using forms of tone signaling over voice-grade telephone lines.  All these were largely reserved for commercial accounts where this type of protection was considered a necessary evil.  Penetration into the residential market was practically infinitesimal.

A huge breakthrough regarding security system installations occurred in the mid 1970s with the invention of the Digital Alarm Communicator Transmitter (DACT).  To connect a customer’s alarm system to a central monitoring station, the digital communicator used the customer’s own regular dial-up telephone service from the Public Switched Telephone Network called POTS, which stands for Plain Old Telephone Service.  

This method of alarm communications became the most prominent form of communications in most central station-connected alarm systems.  The telephone company, (then AT&T) was against the use of DACT on its telephone lines.  AT&T fought against any connection to its circuits other than its own telephone instruments. For a while, AT&T required the use of expensive couplers to be placed between the alarm DACT and the telephone line and regarded alarm systems such as DACT to be “disruptive technology.”

DACT’s introduction made monitored alarm systems affordable for residential users. However, almost from the beginning, the unreliability of DACT over POTS was recognized.  Successful alarm communication is subject to all that natural and man-made misfortunes can create, such as cut telephone lines.  

Implementing Wireless Backup as a Form of Redundancy
A popular method of creating the redundancy for the DACT was to use a separate wireless path.  As a backup to the primary POTS circuit, wireless evolved from a simple one-way transmission path that blindly sent signals without receipt of acknowledgement, to a two-way cellular transmission.

Early on, cellular for alarm systems was used to transmit the same DACT tone data that was carried over the POTS ircuit.  However, it “chewed up” a large portion of the radio spectrum that was desperately needed by the cellular phone carriers for the burgeoning demand for their telephone services.  In the early 1990’s, this changed to the use of the “Control Channel” of the cellular network, so that alarm signaling did not use a large chunk of the available radio spectrum. The “Control Channel” is where the billing of the telephone call occurred. This was of one of the more innovative ways a communications media was adopted to service the alarm industry.  The fatal flaw in this concept, however, was that this cellular technology used the existing Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) network.

AMPS was the earliest version of cellular-based telephone service and was basically an analog cellular service.  AMPS did not use bandwidth efficiently.  Under pressure from cellular telephone companies, AMPS was terminated by the FCC in early 2008, despite the protests of the alarm industry.  This was another prime example of the alarm industry being subjugated to the needs of the telecommunications industry.

The demise of AMPS meant that alarm equipment manufacturers had to quickly “retool” their products into Global System for Mobile communications (GSM).  GSM cellular devices used General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and Short Message Service (SMS) to send data.  SMS is the communication vehicle used by text messaging which is woven into the fabric of every cell phone made.  However, SMS is a one-way network and not “connection based”.  SMS is like shouting out of your window.  Someone probably heard you but there’s no way to be sure.  There is a high degree of assurance, but confirmation is impossible.

Closely coupled in time to the use of cellular technology was the awareness by the alarm industry that IP networks could be useful for alarm transmission.  Alarm signaling through IP networks with specially designed IP communicators allow for two-way confirmation of alarm data.  However, they are still subject to the vagaries of internet downtime, including concerns with broadband connections going down in case of power failure, and battery backup on the customer premise side for routers.

Four Factors Rocking the Telecommunications World
The changing landscape of the present alarm communication environment becomes apparent when we look at four factors.

The first significant item is that Americans are abandoning POTS.  There are more voice calls placed on cell phones than on landlines. In addition, industry research shows that nearly 25 percent of all intrusion alarm systems no longer use landlines for primary alarm signal transmission.

The second development is that AT&T has requested the FCC to eliminate POTS.  In return for relief from maintaining its standard landline service, AT&T stated it would use the money to bolster its broadband service. 

Third is the fact that the longevity of the GPRS cellular network is in danger.  That’s because cellular technology is either 2G or 2.5G, and anyone with an iPhone knows that we’re already on 3G and rapidly approaching the days of 4G.  How long will AT&T continue to look backward and support GPRS, which will soon be outdated and inefficient technology?  What’s most likely to happen is that AT&T will move to what’s known as LTE communication (4G) or some other protocol. They may bridge back to 3G for a while, and maybe as far back as 2.5G, but maybe not.  Unlike the AMPS sunset, which was governed by the FCC, this sunset is likely to be more gradual.  The telephone carriers will simply migrate onto some higher speed transmission type.

The fourth factor is the recent court ruling in favor of Comcast and against the FCC striking down “Network Neutrality”. The ramification of this court ruling has not been fully digested. Network Neutrality is the concept that allows for no restrictions by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) or governments on content or the delivery of information to a broadband network.

Facilities Based vs Non-Facilities Based VoIP
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is an internet-based telecommunications system designed to replace the traditional telephone network, more commonly called the Plain Old Telephone System (POTS). VoIP is dependable only in regards to its voice reliability.  Alarm systems have trouble transmitting data signals over VoIP networks because they are trying to transmit telephonic data over new and entirely different types of phone networks. Engineers who designed VoIP systems made design choices that improve efficiency at the expense of the quality.  This loss of quality of signal can negatively affect the transmission of alarm signals sent by your alarm system and your alarm signal may not be received.

When a VoIP call gets placed, the call gets run through what the industry calls a “CODEC”, which stands for the Compression and Decompression Rates.  CODEC is a software module that decides How the call is going to be compressed;  Where it is going to be sent; and How  it’s  going to be decompressed.  It has to analyze on the fly what the network conditions are.  It’s going to try to give that call the best quality it can.

In transmitting over POTS lines, a separate pair of wires went to every subscriber.  With VoIP, all the data is running down the same pipe.  Since transmitting audio over the internet requires a lot of bandwidth, the VoIP system will try to compress the audio message into a smaller message.  After the compressed audio message is received, it needs to be uncompressed.  Unfortunately, the methods used to uncompress the message can only return the message to a similar, but not exactly the same as the original form.  As a result, a syllable or word might be missed every few words.   

As an analogy of the compression and decompression process, imagine ordering a cheese steak in South Philadelphia.  You might say “I’d like a cheese steak with extra onions”.  The person receiving your order will shout to the cook  “cheese wit extra”.  (Notice that even the word  “with” is compressed).

One missing syllable from one word is no big deal, but imagining that the missing data bit was the one digit of your central station identification number.  The central station would not be able to identify whose alarm it is. When the pipe starts to get full, the codec that’s made to handle your voice call can shift gears on the spot. So now that compression ratio that started as a “big fat call” all of a sudden gets cut in half.  If your ear doesn’t hear it, it is still considered a good call. With a voice call, data bits drop off, but you will only be missing a word or syllable out of a sentence. A spotty call is good enough.  The other party can always ask to repeat what you said.

Where do people’s normal hearing range lie today?  The middle range of a male’s voice might go around 50 Hz.  A high-pitched woman’s voice is around 250Hz.  Alarms start at about 1,000 Hz.  So guess what happens when voice over IP has to compress?  It’s going to throw away the stuff that’s not the voice call.

When you start getting network congestion, those packets are stopping and starting abruptly. If the data packets don’t make it, they have to be resent. When this happens, strange signals will come through to the central station.  Because of this, sometimes conditions that work today, don’t work tomorrow. With VoIP, alarm signals may get through one day, but not tomorrow.

With a facilities-based Internet Service Provider (such as Comcast or FiOS), in theory, they have control from end-to end of where that call goes.  This would be defined as a “managed network”, never touching the public internet. The telephone service from cable companies has been redefined by the FCC as a Managed Facilities Voice  Network (MFVN).  Within that “managed network”, they can prioritize calls and try their very best to keep those conversations up all the time.  Hence, the alarm data has an excellent likelihood of getting to its destination with a high degree of reliability.

With a non-facilitized-based Internet Service Provider, (such as Vonage, Clear, Magic Jack) voice conversations (and alarm data) are compressed into packets and sent down the internet highway over an “unmanaged circuit”.  Hence, VoIP delivered from an “unmanaged circuit” from a non-facilities-based public Internet Service Provider cannot be relied upon to deliver the data accurately.  There’s nothing wrong with non-facilities-based VoIP for voice calls, because you can always ask the person to please repeat themselves if you don’t hear it. You can’t do that with alarm data.  The alarm signal will be missed.

Major Shifts Are in Motion
AT&T said that its request to the FCC to “sunset” POTS was a “trail balloon,” (“Sunset” is a nice word to mean “Get Rid Of”).  The telecommunications giant went on to say it did not see a need for having a wired service from a premise to a collection point (phone company central office or otherwise).

This new service would resemble POTS but would probably be converted to a “VoIP style” service beyond the collection point. This means that even though a customer has POTS, their calls would probably traverse through a “VoIP backbone” along the way. This would mean that a telephone customer wishing to retain POTS could still utilize the same wires currently entering a premises.  These lines would still be powered from the telephone company’s equipment.  Verizon suggested a similar scenario for its own POTS network.

The bottom line is that the existing wired landline service will exist for some time if the demand is there, but the reliability of this new service is subject to how the VoIP coding and decoding is accomplished beyond the collection point. During the coding and decoding is where important data bits of alarm communication get lost, causing improper alarm communication.

Two factors seem to push the sunset of POTS. (1) Americans rapidly abandoning their landlines because of cost. This generation is comfortable with the internet, and will not be tethered to a land line. (2) Perhaps more importantly, is that the wired telephone network is a regulated service as opposed to broadband, which is not currently regulated. So a switch by AT&T or other telecommunications companies to broadband should relieve them of being regulated. The bottom line is that they can raise prices at will without any regulations. However, having lost the network neutrality fight, many believe the FCC will push to regulate broadband for fear that an unregulated Internet will compromise its initiatives.

If the 2008 termination of AMPS was termed a “sunset,” then the predicted slow elimination of GPRS can be termed a “soft sunset.”  AT&T has put forward a five to seven year timeframe for the longevity of GPRS, but other industry insiders are saying three years may be more realistic.

Why the change?  The driver is the competition to give the users of cell phones and smart phones faster service and more services.  The alarm industry uses so little of the network that its needs are not considered, as they were not considered during the AMPS “sunset”. Telephone network executives don’t wake up one morning worrying about the alarm industry’s needs.  The alarm industry is usually a casualty of a Telecom’s plan of expansion of their main business.

Private Radio Networks Emerge as a Popular Alternative 
Over the last few years, Citadel has created its own private radio network with equipment manufactured by AES-Intellinet.  The AES-Intellinet system is a “wireless mesh network” made up of smart subscriber units installed into individual homes which act as a receiver, transmitter, and repeater.  Each alarm site is linked to the network with multiple paths of communication.  As new units are added, the network dynamically reconfigures itself to incorporate new paths of communication.  It self-heals and re-routes itself intuitively selecting the best communication routes.  Every signal is authenticated, acknowledged, and confirmed with true 2-way technology.  Alarm signals follow the shortest, most efficient route available insuring fast, reliable alarm communication.  Alarm signals from any customer in the network will reach Citadel’s U.L. Listed Central Monitoring Station between 1 and 3 seconds!

Power outages are no problem because each individual radio has its own extensive battery back-up, providing seamless and continuous coverage.  Battery status is also monitored by Citadel’s Central Monitoring Station during the daily communication test.  Every day, each and every radio reports into the central station to test communication and battery status.

This “mesh network” offers higher reliability and significant speed improvements over traditional cellular communication technologies that rely on cell towers and cell maintenance schedules. (Have you ever experienced a dropped cellular phone call or no-connection because a cell was “busy”?)  Remember the original TV ads where “you could hear a pin drop” to the latest advertising campaign: “the network with the least dropped calls”.  With a private radio network, there is no reliance on a third party telephone carrier.  Citadel owns and operates its own wireless alarm communication network, with our own FCC License, and we do not have to depend on anyone else.