The purpose of Alarm Monitoring is off premise notification that something critical is happening and immediate and necessary response has to be made. Life Safety and Property preservation seem to be the most urgent of these situations which require 24 hours a day uninterrupted surveillance. Modern Alarm Monitoring centers are manned 24 hours a day and are capable of receiving signals in a variety of communication methods and formats from Burglar and Fire Alarm Systems. The Plain Old Telephone Line has been the standard for the past 50 years. Before that they used a dedicated pair of copper wires from the premise to the police of fire station.

The plain old telephone lines are being replaced by VoIP or internet phone lines which are less and less compatible with security modem communications. Code Compliant Life Safety systems require reliable and redundant services where a single point of failure will not impede the alarm signal from reaching the alarm monitoring center. Our experience here at ESI is that Networks alone are not a reliable solution for life safety but are suitable for the user to manage and view systems remotely. Cell Phone Service seems to be a viable alternative, but additional cell service charges will apply and cell towers do go down for maintenance.