By: Lauren Pozzo and Jana Yerbic
The sun is setting on plain old telephone (POTS) lines, causing phone bills to skyrocket. Copper lines are becoming extremely expensive to maintain, and phone companies are preparing to cut and run. Now is the time to start evaluating your options. At Tech Electronics, we’ve utilized several technologies to craft monitoring solutions to help our customers make this transition with ease. Our solutions provide a more cost effective method of monitoring, uniquely packaged to meet your needs.
The first package is a capital purchase of new monitoring equipment. We offer this solution through a combination of IP and GSM technologies. IP (Internet Protocol) and GSM (Global Systems for Mobile Communication) provide a multi-access technology combination as the communication link between your system and the Central Monitoring Station. Upgrading to IP/GSM not only reduces your monthly phone bill by eliminating the need for phone lines, but it also increases the communication and supervision of the critical life-safety systems protecting your people and property.
The second package we offer is another cellular-based alarm monitoring communication method, CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access). Similar to GSM, it is a multi-access cellular technology but defaults to SMS (short message service) if the cellular connection is poor. The main difference between IP/GSM and CDMA is we offer the CDMA technology package as a subscription service.
Today, it’s all about pay as you go. As consumers, everything is a subscription service; television, music, and even razors. Now you can have your life safety systems monitored as a subscription too. The advantage of this solution is that there are no upfront costs. The equipment is leased for a monthly fee which includes service of the system and any future technology or software upgrade required to keep the communicator functioning at 100%. The monthly fee is slightly higher than the capital purchase offering but includes more services with no contractual term. If you are unsatisfied, you can cancel at any time without fear of fees or other charges.
Since both options deliver a cost effective and reliable alternative for monitoring, it comes down to what works best for you. Luckily, we are here to help you find the right monitoring solution for your business. The sun is setting on POTS lines and holding out to the bitter end is costly.
