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."

Comments

Actually great for these companies!

[dowlingw]

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...

Re:Actually great for these companies!

[Rogerborg]

They already make ludicrous profits from installing the current POTS systems, which then sit and do nothing for 99.9% of their life. What they don't want is to have to eat the investment in coming up with a whole new system that can also sit and do nothing for 99.9% of the time.