At Heathen HQ, we pay nearly $30 a month, and have for years, to maintain a plain-old-telephone-service (“POTS”) line just for the alarm system. We use Vonage for our actual telephone, which is infinitely preferable to AT&T’s products.
I finally got fed up with this, and called ADT to see if there was some way to interface the alarm with Vonage. No, they say. No one seems to know why (I can fax with Vonage; seems like the alarm signal would work, but whatever).
What ADT does offer, though, is a quasi-cellular wireless hookup. The device itself is $99. There is no installation fee. It raises my ADT monitoring cost by $15 a month. It’s a no-brainer; they’re coming to install it this afternoon.
Think about this: Cellular alarm monitoring is more cost-effective than land-land. Why? Because AT&T wants to live in your pocket, that’s why. Treat them accordingly.
Bonus prize: your alarm still works even if the wired line is disconnected at the outside junction box.
Alternate method: buy a fixed wireless terminal and a prepayed sim card and not raise your monitoring fee…
Is that what you do?
Alas, too late. The tech also found the source of the intermittent (and vexing) “I’ve got a fault! No, wait! I’m okay!” problem, which unfortunately was terminal for the parts involved. Upside, though: New keypads, new brain, and no more random beeping from time to time.
Downside is that cellular towers are not as quick to come up in an emergency and your cellular device is more likely to fail than POTS.
I used to take that as a truism, but after Ike I got cell service back here before I got POTS. Go figure.