Customers often use Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) adapters so they can make cheaper or free calls across their nation or internationally.  Telco’s are currently decommissioning  their Plain Old Telephone System (POTS) analogue network’s and replacing it with VoIP as the  alternative for old style customer premises equipment (CPE) and its connectivity.

VoIP adapters carefully emulate the POTS technology and while they give a very good rendition of the analogue network, the Quality Of Service (QOS) unfortunately is not perfect due to jitter and translation delays between Telcos. Because  VoIP does not deliver 100% reliable alarm transmission medium Telco’s recommend that customers convert their existing alarm equipment to full Ethernet IP to ensure the messages get thru without delay or error.

Home and small business customers will predominantly use the VoIP ports on the CPE or modem supplied by the Telco. Alternatively customers can purchase the VoIP adapter as a separate device. and connect to their existing Ethernet network. Larger customers have whole office phone systems based on VoIP and can have over 64 voice trunks on a single copper line.

Contractors prefer that customers do not use VoIP adapters for Alarm transmission as the quality of service is less than a 100% and bad Alarm transmissions can result in unnecessary risk, VoIP technology is not acceptable.

VoIP adapters are not a long term solution for voice communications in the digital age (internet) rather they are a technological response to the existing legacy equipment that customers already own.

Contractors are advised to skip the whole VoIP “adapter” route and immediately convert their customers alarm equipment to an IP based alarm solution with “built-in” VoIP and as Ethernet will be the long term connectivity methodology to the network.

Those alarm contractors using voice services within analogue medical alarms and still deploying traditional Alarm equipment and need to connect via a broadband gateway will need to purchase adapter technology and network services from a ASP ( Alarm Service Provider) who will ensure QOS and protocol emulation.

All new ISP’s use VoIP adapters as a way to provide voice services to compete against incumbent Telco’s and their huge analogue voice telephone switching systems. The unreliability of the VoIP system for Alarms and other slow speed modem technology has become an unwanted technical challenge for these companies.

Most ISP’s recommend that customer and/or their contractors migrate equipment to IP and actively promote a change to  Ethernet type interface so the compatibility issues with VoIP are side stepped.

Telco’s already know that Alarm manufacturers are switching their new product lines to IP and there is very little new development in analogue space so long term support for this type of legacy equipment will not be necessary as customer equipment is already migrating to IP.

It should be remembered that VoIP adapter technology is designed for “voice” not data and the idea of using this method for Alarm data is fundamentally wrong and customers/contractors need understand this going forward.