One of the best ways to boost the reliability of your burglar alarm system is to add a GSM communications capability to your service. To appreciate why, it helps to know how a typical alarm system works. Most residential and commercial alarm systems communicate with the central security monitoring station via a landline. When an alarm is tripped, the system uses your phone line to send an alert to the monitoring station. The monitoring station receives the alert and then initiates a response process that might include attempting to contact you first and then dispatching emergency personnel, if necessary.
The process is effective, but it has its drawbacks. If your phone line is cut or damaged in some way, your burglar alarm system will not be able to send an alert out to the monitoring station in the event of a security incident. A traditional alarm system setup also will not work if you are one of the growing numbers of homeowners in Houston and around the country who don’t have a landline anymore. If present trends are any indication, GSM and wireless systems will also become the only options available to consumers soon.
Several of the largest telecommunications companies in the United States have already announced plans to discontinue Plain Old Telephone Services (POTS) in the next few years. Verizon for instance, has said it will sunset landline services by the end of 2016. AT&T meanwhile, plans to retire POTS as soon as the end of 2014. As more companies follow suit, GSM communicators will become primary alarm connectors over the next few years.
GSM is short for Global System for Mobile Communications. As the name implies, GSM is a wireless communication protocol. GSM devices do not require a landline or even electricity in order to communicate with other devices. Adding such a cellular communicator to your burglar alarm system means that you no longer have to depend solely on your landline in an emergency. A GSM device can send alerts even when phones lines or power lines are non-operational. GSM communicators support high-speed alerting and full event reporting capabilities. So they can do everything that landlines do, except in a faster and more efficient manner. Importantly, many GSM communicators support functions that allow them to be controlled remotely by smartphone products.
A growing number of homeowners and businesses in the Houston area have begun using GSM communicators as backup alerting systems. Many others use it as the primary alarm communicator. Regardless of how you plan on using the capability, GSM communicators are relatively inexpensive, easy to install and offer a much more secure way of alarm event alerting compared to traditional landline based setups.
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