Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Got Alarm?

If you have an alarm system for your home or business, and it uses wireless analog to communicate with the dispatcher, you may want to contact your alarm vender soon.

AMPS (analog mobile phone system) has been around since the early 1980's. It forwards intrusion, fire or medical alerts to your monitoring company, who then dispatch an appropriate response. It may be the primary comm system for your alarm, or it could be the backup method - used if an intruder cuts the phone cable to your building.

There are over 26 million installations using AMPS in the US.

On Feb 18, 2008 AMPS will be cut off because our national phone providers think running the analog system is too expensive. They successfully lobbied the FCC to allow them to stop providing analog service.

There is a replacement system, based on modern digital systems. Most alarm systems should be upgradeable. But the timeline to get that upgrade is fairly short.

More info:
http://www.alarm.org/pressreleases/2007/pr072507_amps.htm