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Security Guards, Alarm Companies Object to Australia's National Fiber Network
natecochrane writes "Australia's proposed high-speed National Broadband Network has put the fate of more than a million security alarm systems that alert Australians to fire, home invasion, break-in and medical emergency in limbo pending the building of a simulated test bed next year. A group that represents security guards and those that supply monitored alarms has concerns that ranged from the inconvenient ('angry customers woken by their alarm systems beeping' during a nightly NBN upgrade) to life-threatening in the case of medical alarms, its CEO said. 'Under the fibre-optic system there won't be that redundancy and backup [from the copper phone system]. So if it goes down no one will know,' ASIAL CEO Bryan de Caires said."
The system we've used for (nearly) decades where when a system stops responding, we know there's some kind of failure, and we send out alerts is absolutely impossible to utilise with fibre...
With enough fiber in your diet, you won't have to wake up in the middle of the night in anger.
The advantage of copper that that devices can run off it but lots of devices can run for weeks on batteries now, and moving to fibre doesn't really change the way communications are done that much. Alarms can probably be cellular now anyway.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
For mission critical or life threatening services a simple 3g service would provide the necesacery backup, or just dual FO connections pointed at different NTU's on seperate networks. Redundancy is always an option.
I would have thought these companies would be jumping at the chance to roll out new NBN based solutions, and thinking of new ways to provide redundancy. e.g. through the 3G phone network.
I would have thought the monitoring companies would have loved the NBN, it means they can ditch large, space and power consuming analog PSTN gear with power and space efficient routers. As far as saying theres no monitoring, thats BS. If you're offering a Layer 2 wholesale product, you can see whether or not there are tunnels established for that client, and if the tunnel is up - you can poll to see if the device is reachable. Also a win for alarm system companies, who now get a chance to make ludicrous profits on installing entirely new alarm systems country-wide. Sounds like a knee-jerk reaction that if given attention might actually do these parties more harm than good...
1. If the alarms beep during network upgrades MAKE BETTER ALARMS
Hell, if the current models somehow will do this if/when NBN comes around then you get to make money selling people upgrades surely?
2. WTF? No way of knowing when the system is down?
I can see that if some systems rely on power-over-POTS then there's a downside to getting fibre to the home, but seriously, I would have thought these industry types should be rubbing their greasy hands in glee at being able to offer upgrade services.
It's more about the kick backs the alarm monitoring companies get from the Telecom providers for using their service for alarm monitoring rather than any technical reason. Thousands of homes, at least one phone call a day. A few cents kicked back to the security company. A license to print money - no wonder they are complaining.
Satellite is around, and easy to implement. You get a basic text device for under $150. If you need more than 60 characters to say "being robbed" something is wrong.
Why isn't it possible to amek the fibre-optic system redundant? Isn't that what you want anyway?
ps, a system is down/unreachable when there is no hartbeat.These systems do check for hartbeats right?
I wonder why they really hate this system. Putting redundancy checks won't be very hard - using a more secure and reliable transmission kind (satellite? wireless?) not too much of a problem either.
I guess they either don't want to move with the times or it hurts them somewhere.
This has to be one of the most bullshit statements I've had the displeasure of reading.
There is two things wrong with this, the POTS copper system ISN'T redundant, they have a single pair of copper going onto a single card in an exchange (CO). They do have an SLA that they have to have 99.99% uptime, and if Telstra / Optus / whoever don't keep the copper line up they get fined by the government (ACA?). Secondly, ANYONE who wants redundancy can get a GSM mobile / copper wire system. A LOT of businesses have to replace their alarm systems every two or three years for insurance reasons (The insurance companies sometimes even pay for the upgrade) and a number of businesses already have this setup. If they have to go to NBN eventually (The copper system isn't dissapearing anytime soon) they will have a copper to VoIP setup with a GSM backup, it's not exactly hard.
There is so much inertia behind the copper system that it will take a LONG time to decomission, (50 years?) I don't see the reason why they would have to upgrade anything immediately.
Yes, there is medical requirements and a lot of dependency on the existing setup, but the new network won't be finished for 10 years, let alone the old one being decomissioned....
Berny
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
man, what a load of bullshit... :-)
these people are paid by someone that doesn't want this network for the future to see the light of day... lemme guess... telstra
Why not have some system that sits there sending a message every 30 seconds, and warn when it stops....
Boo friggin hoo, as an ASIAL member myself these systems used in small and medium sized properties has been outdated for a decade and a majority of them suffer from a wide variety of design and security issues. About time they all become obsolete, and guess who will be paid to upgrade and replace them? They are, so I don't know why they are bitching, they should have given proper advice to their clients in the first place in regards to choosing a system and lifetime.
the systems are becoming more complex so you need more specialised people to do that.
Anyone know how that would sit with getting a green card from the UK?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Even in my current sleep-deprived state, it seems obvious that this is unlikely-event fear-mongering from established business interests, or something of the sort.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Uhh, from what I've heard, back to base alarms work perfectly fine over some existing FTTH rollouts. And some alarm companies are now moving to GSM/3G anyway.
And if you actually bother registering as a priority assistance customer no doubt NBNCo/whoever will give you a free UPS for that ONT.
The article doesn't make it very clean but I think the redundancy referred to is the act of using the POTS network as a fall-back power supply.
Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
I don't HAVE an alarm. Never did have one. It's just me, and my guns. Whatever will I do if someone breaks in? Oh, woe is me, poor backwoods nobody, with no alarms, and no one to answer the alarm that I don't have!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
For mission critical or life threatening services a simple 3g service would provide the necesacery backup, or just dual FO connections pointed at different NTU's on seperate networks.
HIGH AVAILABILITY DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!!!
Simple redundant comm paths might get you as far as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_availability#Percentage_calculation 99% availability or, with some engineer finagling, even 99.9% availability. That means that on average such a system might be non-working anywhere from 8.5 hours to more than 3.5 days in the course of a year.
The copper telephone network systems requires a level of availability that defined the term "carrier grade" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_grade, aka 99.999% available. That means they might be non-working for little more than 5 minutes during an entire year.
That's a huge difference.
They're likely worried about the power supplied by the telco on the copper pair - however any robber who has the brains to kill the house power probably knows to kill the POTS landline too.
If they (security people) are -really- worried then they'd have made sure that like most other systems they have their own battery-backup built in for just these sorts of situations ( not to mention the whole 3G/Wireless backups which would make more sense in order to eliminate the whole cut-wire silence issue ).
All in all, another pointless beat up by people who probably don't want their cozy world of routine changed (better put them with RIAA/MPAA etc).
Yeah, and when some kid wanders into the hospital with one of these...
http://www.methodshop.com/gadgets/reviews/celljammers/index.shtml
People on here are misunderstanding the claim of redundancy.
What the guy is talking about is with the POTS, your telco has giant battery and generator warehouses that can run the entire city grid for 48+ hours in the event of power outage. Normally, this is not the case with fibre, especially at all of the junctions.
This is a non-issue.
Our corroding copper network is so utterly unreliable that this hysterical stance is laughable.
There are around a million faults logged each year. There are a bit over 10 million lines.
I have not once ever had a customer complain that an alarm siren went off when the phone went dead.
It beeped to say there was trouble, and the security company called their mobile because they didn't get the daily pulse, but never ever has the siren activated.
Yes, it is possible that killing the fibre/copper will kill the alarm's ability to call for help.
Fibre is not any more likely to fail than copper.
This is why most new alarms have GPRS modules. The copper is terrible.
Failed communications do not prevent the alarm from doing its normal monitoring and activating a siren when necessary.
They should look at the up side.
Monitored alarms with cameras. Live streams from activated alarms. Recorded if the network fails.
Remote diagnosis of false alarms. (Camera saw a cat). No other movement in past 5 minutes. No dispatch required.
GPRS/3G fail over.
Remote movement monitoring.
Lets say you have an elderly relative, you can set an alarm trigger if they are in their house and there's no movement in 10 hours.
Sound monitoring. Anything over 100db (loud calls for help) triggers sound monitoring.
The nature of the sound can be assessed, and help sent if required.
The possibilities are far greater than the limitations.
Most secure alarm transfers already go over IP.
It's basically a special terminal card which attaches to the alarm central with RS232, turns it over to IP and tunnels it to the guarding company. Theese usually have GPRS/3G/Edge as a fallback. They're battery backupped.
The link is monitored 24/7h, and when the tunnel drops, it switches over to the fallback and causes an alarm.
This makes old phonecentrals obsolete (thank you dear God.)
There are so many examples of single-point-of-failure scenarios that we already have a solution for it - heartbeat monitoring (PINGs). The alarm/security company sends out heartbeat checks every 2-5 seconds, the device at the customer's home responds. If it doesn't, an alert pops up. It's clean, simple, and is done probably millions of times a day already. Is this article serious that people are legitimately worried that no one will know when a line goes down? And, for someone else who mentioned it - have a cellular backup... if the pings fail, try to get to it through a secondary (cellular) network. If that doesn't work, an alert pops up and a call goes to the homeowner asking if their house hasn't exploded, taking the security equipment with it or something.
I work for a large telco and coincidentally monitor alarms all day long. Our sites that are on copper go down constantly. Every lightening storm knocks out hundreds of customers. We always joke when a site switches to fiber that we'll not be talking to them anymore. Sometimes we call the local techs to say goodbye. Why? Because once a site switches to fiber they NEVER go down again. It's like they vanish off of our alarm maps. The simple fact of the matter is that the only situations that can drop the fiber connection would most definitely drop any copper connection in the area as well... major router going down, cable cut, etc... This redundancy crap they are talking about just shows how little they know about how it works. The REAL reason they object to this is obvious, I've seen first hand how their "alarms" work. The more sophisticated alarms actually have some 1990's era modem inside that dials into the alarm company to tell them theirs trouble. This requires a standard pots line. I've seen these lines go down for weeks before the alarm company runs a standard test and realizes it doesn't work anymore and calls us. Then I find out their customer didn't know what the line was for so they requested a disconnect 3 weeks ago. Great reliability from your security company there... Then there is the OLD SCHOOL way of doing things. The alarm company just uses our copper pair as an Open/Closed circuit. A simple smoke alarm that opens the circuit when it goes off, or, and this was my favorite, the water alarm. The cable pair would end with 2 contacts that were held apart by an aspirin. (no I'm not kidding) if there was flooring and the water got too high, the aspirin would dissolve, the contacts would touch and the circuit would complete and set off the remote alarm. Once ever 3 months they would call me to test and replace the aspirin. If everything switches to fiber, their $2 alarm systems would have to switch to something that could work on fiber that'd cost $100+. That's what they're concerned about.
so replacing a single system with another single system means that the first system is no longer there. yes i follow so far... where does the problem with reduced redundancy come in? 1(copper)-1(copper)+1(fiber)=1(fiber) not sure I get this line of reasoning...
...I guess, somehow (lol), using fiber precludes using wireless as a backup too?
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'Under the fibre-optic system there won't be that redundancy and backup [from the copper phone system]. So if it goes down no one will know,' ASIAL CEO Bryan de Caires said."
I work in the security industry in the US, but I'm sure the configurations are similar. Most fire and security systems here are monitored over POTS lines. The panels are programmed to call into the monitoring station at a certain time of the day to verify they are still online, and if the station doesn't receive a daily test signal within a 24 hour period, the owner of the account is contacted to let them know there is a problem with their panel, dialer, or phone lines. If a phone line itself goes down, most panels will beep, but the monitoring station won't know until it calls in for it's daily test again. So if a homeowner is not at their house to hear the beeping, they won't know their system is no longer being monitored. This process is the same whether it's using VOIP or POTS.
.256 Kb, and even if pushed out to 5 minutes is .08 Kb. In any case, that's much better than once every 24 hours, and the homeowner will be notified as soon as the signal is lost instead of potentially hours later.
The new method is to hang the alarm panel on the network, and skip the phone lines altogether. Unlike a POTS or VOIP dialer which only "calls home" once in a 24 hour period, the "IP" systems can communicate much more frequently and for cheaper since the end-user isn't using up calling minutes, and the central station isn't using incoming toll-free minutes. The panels can be programmed to poll at almost any time interval without using much bandwidth. Combined incoming/outgoing traffic for a single system at 10-second polling is around 2.3 Kb, at 90 seconds polling is only
Even if a POTS line is technically more "reliable" and has better "uptime" you're more likely to get quicker notification and be able to address the issue right away with a system that talks over the internet.
It's impossible for a cable to come down in a storm, or a backhoe dig in the wrong place. Well if the cable is copper, if it's fiber then that happens all the time.
There are a number of reasons why ASIAL is sooking loudly about this.
Removing Copper PSTN lines from a house precludes the following...
1) Alarm monitoring rebates on calls. Yes, alarm monitoring companies do get rebates from Telco companies based on incoming calls. (You will notice that in Australia all alarm monitoring back to base numbers are 1300 numbers, and are charged accordingly by the telcos...)
The rebates are not much, actually they are only a couple of cents a call... But a typical alarm system makes 3 calls a day (Arming, Disarming and a test report).
2) GSM modules for alarm panels are available. Yes, you can easily add a GSM module to any existing alarm system which allows the alarm to make GSM calls to the monitoring station.
This solution though is expensive for the consumer.
(I.E. paying for 1300 calls on a mobile plan...) You will find only commercial clients are willing to do this.
3) Existing infrastructure for the monitoring company is rendered obsolete. Monitoring companies need multiple incoming lines, multiple alarm receivers, redundancy and fail-over systems just like large IT departments. The most expensive equipment for alarm monitoring companies is the Alarm Receivers, followed by the software... (Old Ademco receivers can cost $10,000 for a 2 line system... You will need two of these at least for redundancy)....
IP Alarm solutions are starting to become viable... Contact ID over ID is available on some of the more premium systems...
The problem is the protocol itself is not greatly standardized.
An example, Paradox systems require a propriety Paradox IP Receiver, and the monitoring software must support the receiver as well...
This situation will become better once more and more products support Contact ID over IP, how ever, there is no opportunity to receive kickbacks from telcos using this system, (Unless you are using proprietary VPN GPRS solutions from Telstra / Optus which is expensive for the station and the consumer), and the investment required for Contact ID over IP is quite substantial.
Basically, like all industries, Alarm monitoring companies will need to adapt, or they will face extinction.
What guarantee does Verizon have that their VOIP is going to be more reliable than the cable company's VOIP?
<SARCASM>Guarantees? That's so old school. We don't need guarantees anymore. After all, it's fiber, and it's all digital, and it's new and improved. Wake up old dude.Beside, if the network fails, you can just use you cellphone. Who uses landlines anymore, Grandpa?</SARCASM>
More seriously; I also have cable phone service (and a copper line for backup) and I feel that your availability rate is outrageously low. You should complain and it may do you well to raise the issue with your public services commission. But, to answer your question, none of these new services offer guarantees. They only offer "promises". You can't get a meaningful SLA for FiOS, not even for business class service.
The entire communications industry is rapidly changing and what's changing behind the scenes will shock a lot of people when they figure it out. It's not your father's phone company anymore. That's for sure.
OH MY GAWD! A child could eat that aspirin !
Thats not good. I'm surprised this company doesn't have a backup plan in place. Fiber optic was suppose to be a good thing for people.
I live in the US and work as the Manager for a Central Station for alarm companies.
I know for a fact that all that bitching about moving to fiber is really just an excuse
from the security industry to stick to old technology and never have to worry about
changing with the times. Burglary, medical, and even fire systems monitored over
phone lines are not dependable anyway. If a burglar cut you phone line and your alarm
system has no other form of communication then you are left without any protection anyway.
There is no excuse for the industry to keep from planning out a long term switch to
full wireless systems that provide full data transport reliably and highly encrypted.
Granted the industry can not support moving the entire infrastructure to wireless or
any alternate form of communication given such a short time period to do it in.
Sounds like a bunch of wining that they'll have to upgrade their equipment in some fashion to me. The lowest road they could probably take would be to insert a device between the alarm system and the fiber to make it think its still running through copper. We use a bunch of similar devices at my work to allow fax machines to use the Ethernet phone system. Add a $20 battery backup and you'd have pretty much the same functionality as your previous system. That's the more cheery picture though, I would guess that there is another factor at work as well. The current system sounds like it somewhat limits customers to geographic area companies (due to phone rates/agreements), kind of like ISP's near monopolies in the US on broadband. I bet they fear that the new system could open the market up to more countrywide/global competition, and if they don't upgrade & improve their services they'll get left in the dust. Depending on the services they offer they might even be afraid that consumers may dump alarm companies all together. There are more than a few cheap (~$150) independent devices which will call/text/email a list of people if one of their sensors is tripped.
If they (security people) are -really- worried then they'd have made sure that like most other systems they have their own battery-backup built in for just these sorts of situations ( not to mention the whole 3G/Wireless backups which would make more sense in order to eliminate the whole cut-wire silence issue )
Wouldn't one of those cell phone jammers make quick work of a GSM alarm module?
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
"...dual FO connections pointed at different NTU's on seperate networks."
Um, actually that basic idea of redundant paths is exactly how the carriers do high availability in the core network. The double loop arrangement in SONET amounts to the same thing but with less flexibility than in general networks (which can be a good thing - less to think through) Also, everybody agrees that unless you get your switches from the bottom of a Cracker Jack box, fiber is way, way more reliable than copper. Any fiber system that only manages two or three nines reliability is broken.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
I seem to recall back when I used a landline that there were more than 5 minutes every year where I had no service.
Stop! Dremel time!
Do alarm companies usually come out to your house in the event of an alarm? Or do they just dispatch the alert to emergency services?
Many people here are commenting that the concern of alarm companies is having to upgrade their equipment.
That may be, but my first instinct was actually something different. As you switch to fiber the natural progression would seem to be to move towards an IP based system. Once you get to an IP based system, where to next? From there, is it really that important that the monitoring company have a local presence?
At would point do you end up with the next big Google product being called 'Google Security' with home mounted cameras and an intelligent AI based system that makes a smart determination as to whether or not the threat is real or a false alarm and makes the appropriate calls. All this delivered for free because it is ad supported (obviously there are huge privacy implications, but if *I* were running a security system monitoring company, that is what *I* would be afraid of).
With the rise of smart phones, 3g and streaming mobile data, self monitoring your home is not the difficult task it perhaps once was.
They're likely worried about the power supplied by the telco on the copper pair
Nope. It's a dry pair. Only the copper is leased; it never connects to telco equipment.
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however any robber who has the brains to kill the house power probably knows to kill the POTS landline too
There are 2 types of leased line arrangements:
The more secure type transmits a stream of pulses that is integrated at the far end.
No pulses or the wrong frequency / duty cycle indicates an abnormal condition.
Your ordinary snatch-and-grab thief has no clue how to deal with those.
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The second type puts out a constant DC voltage and has 3 possible states:
Normal polarity is the OK state.
Reversed polarity is the Alarm state.
Zero voltage is the Trouble state.
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A battery *can* defeat one of these.
Your suggestion to cut the wires or short them together will produce a non-OK state which will require investigation (possibly an armed response).
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Thanks for playing.
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gewg_ (CAPTCHA: sketchy)
Alarm companies crying foul over the roll-out of digital fibre to the home/business is an Aussie update on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem/.
I predict that:
a. this is actually a problem, but that there are solutions to it;
b. the suppliers will find solutions;
c. the 'use' will have to pay;
d. afterwards, we'll wonder what the issue was and why we had to pay. Meanwhile, we complain.
Looking at space, radio, science and computing from a 'down-under' amateur enthusiast perspective.