Many people have elected to use voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) services to replace their traditional phone lines. VOIP makes phone calls through broadband network access, which does not travel through traditional phone lines. As a typical home security system requires phone lines to access their monitoring centers, a user of a VOIP service, such as Vonage, will need to modify their home security system to work with broadband signals.
There are some drawbacks to using a home security system that communicate to a call center via VOIP. Using a traditional phone line for your home security system is only dependent on phone lines being operational, while VOIP requires that you have both power and internet working in order to send out a signal. Likewise, your bandwidth use can impact the reaction time of your home security system when using VOIP. If most of your network resources are occupied, it may hamper how fast your alert will get to a monitoring center. Due to some of these drawbacks, in addition to the relative newness of VOIP technology, it can be hard to find a home security system that is compatible with VOIP.
There are several companies that do provide VOIP compatibility, but it may take a little bit of looking around. When researching a home security system, see if it explicitly supports VOIP. If it does support VOIP, try to identify what protocol the home security system uses. Although there are efforts in progress to standardize VOIP communication, there are currently different VOIP protocols used by any given VOIP-compatible home security system. If the protocol does not match that of your digital phone provider, your home security system may not function properly.
So, as you can see, a VOIP compatible home security system might be impractical or, depending on the availability of VOIP-friendly security systems in your area, impossible to use. However, you are not totally up the creek. If you still have a traditional phone line, you can still dedicate that phone line to your home security system. If you don’t have a traditional line, however, you can get protection through other means. Many VOIP users have opted to use a cellular transmitter home security system. Systems with cellular compatibility will notify monitoring centers through a cellphone signal. As long as there is cellular reception in the area, this is probably the best way for digital phone users to secure their homes. However, if you are in an area without cell reception, you may want to actually investigate burgeoning VOIP home security system technologies.
