Does anyone out there have Vonage and a home alarm system?  I have Brinks, and I am not in a contract (thank goodness) and it looks like Vonage does not work well with my system.

Any thought are appreciated.

I suggest you read:

https://www.mybrinks.com/home/si_voipinfo.aspx

You might also want to read the ADT stance.

http://www.adt.com/wps/portal/adt/for_your_home/products_services/security_systems/voip/

Like any other service, VOIP QOS is the real issue.  Signal quality and call flow can vary with VOIP implementations.
Many customers of VOIP based installation have opted for a celluar backup system.  I don’t know about Brink’s installation
of the service at this point.

While you are looking at VOIP please check out 911 service on the system.  Make sure you understand the 911 design of
your VOIP service provider.  VOIP is not regulated in the same way as traditional TIP and Ring systems.

Are you on Verizon DSL ?  I know someone with Vonage on the MT WireFree system and it is horrible.  Latency is too high on MT WireFree but any VOIP solution is more forgiving on DSL.  Ping times under 50ms is ideal.  Anything more than that and you run into issues with VOIP.  That has been my experience anyway.  We set them up on local 100MB/1GB networks and VOIP works better then the old digital phones.

We ‘almost’ switched to Vonage last year.  Literally, the day before the switch we were told to notify ADT.  Lucky we did - ADT doesn’t monitor over most VOIP’s.  Guess which one is the only one authorized in our area?  Verizon FIOS.  Considering that’s not available, we scrapped the whole switch.  Check with your alarm company that they don’t have any restrictions when it comes to VOIP.

Because we had already told Verizon we were switching and they thought we were, they asked us why.  We told them point blank - $$.  The Vonage service was half of our Verizon bill.  Considering we don’t use the home phone much (we were going to get rid of it altogether except the home security system requires one), saving half was a huge amount.  They asked us if we’d stay with Verizon if they lowered our bill.  (We were staying anyway because of the home security snafu above).  We said “Uh, sure”. They cut our bill in half.  Give it a try.

(Woooooooowwwww!)

zort2001 - 02 July 2008 08:35 PM

I suggest you read:

https://www.mybrinks.com/home/si_voipinfo.aspx

You might also want to read the ADT stance.

http://www.adt.com/wps/portal/adt/for_your_home/products_services/security_systems/voip/

Like any other service, VOIP QOS is the real issue.  Signal quality and call flow can vary with VOIP implementations.
Many customers of VOIP based installation have opted for a celluar backup system.  I don’t know about Brink’s installation
of the service at this point.

While you are looking at VOIP please check out 911 service on the system.  Make sure you understand the 911 design of
your VOIP service provider.  VOIP is not regulated in the same way as traditional TIP and Ring systems.

Sounds like you may be an old CO guy?  I worked as a switch tech/framehop in the NSA telecom department years ago on old Stromberg Carlson XY stuff.  Vonage is just so inexpensive for the little that I use the home phone that it was hard not to make the change.

Thanks for the links.  Very helpful information for sure.  I am going to give Brinks a call today to see what they need to do, and if it is not too costly I may go with the cellular backup system.

jw2569 - 02 July 2008 10:08 PM

Are you on Verizon DSL ?  I know someone with Vonage on the MT WireFree system and it is horrible.  Latency is too high on MT WireFree but any VOIP solution is more forgiving on DSL.  Ping times under 50ms is ideal.  Anything more than that and you run into issues with VOIP.  That has been my experience anyway.  We set them up on local 100MB/1GB networks and VOIP works better then the old digital phones.

I had MT (now DoubleDog Communications) and tried Vonage a couple of years ago.  I could hear callers, but they could not hear me because of the tortoise like upload speeds of MT.  I was better off with a tin cup and string, so I scrapped Vonage at that time.  I now have Clearview/Armstrong and my broadband test speeds are excellent, so I am going to give it a run again.  Thanks for the info!

A new Unified Communincations guy!  I have been working on Integrating Microsoft’s Office Commuincation Server 2007/R2-->Cisco Call Manager 6/7 --->Cisco Prescence Server 6/7.
Travelling between Redmond-->San Jose--> and Stewartstown!

Bobby102 - 02 July 2008 11:38 PM

We ‘almost’ switched to Vonage last year.  Literally, the day before the switch we were told to notify ADT.  Lucky we did - ADT doesn’t monitor over most VOIP’s.  Guess which one is the only one authorized in our area?  Verizon FIOS.  Considering that’s not available, we scrapped the whole switch.  Check with your alarm company that they don’t have any restrictions when it comes to VOIP.

Because we had already told Verizon we were switching and they thought we were, they asked us why.  We told them point blank - $$.  The Vonage service was half of our Verizon bill.  Considering we don’t use the home phone much (we were going to get rid of it altogether except the home security system requires one), saving half was a huge amount.  They asked us if we’d stay with Verizon if they lowered our bill.  (We were staying anyway because of the home security snafu above).  We said “Uh, sure”. They cut our bill in half.  Give it a try.

(Woooooooowwwww!)

Thanks Bobby.  Great insight!  Between the cell phone, home phone and my business lines Verizon gets over $325 a month from me now.  I should give them a chance to help me cut them all in half.

I have also found some information on the web from a couple of monitoring companies that will retrofit my existing equipment with their equipment and monitor via broadband connection.  When I get some more information I will post it.

zort2001 - 03 July 2008 07:11 AM

A new Unified Communincations guy!  I have been working on Integrating Microsoft’s Office Commuincation Server 2007/R2-->Cisco Call Manager 6/7 --->Cisco Prescence Server 6/7.
Travelling between Redmond-->San Jose--> and Stewartstown!

Cool, I was a Genesys CTI consultant and an Aspect ACD/Contact Server guy until I decided to open up the restaurant.  I do miss the technology part though and in this tough economy I am still getting weekly calls from recruiters for available CTI gigs.  I don’t miss the weekly trips to and from the airport!  I have spent some time in San Jose as well, but I have never been to Redmond.  If I ever get back into the game I would love to work on the Cisco products.

Interesting, I am working on an extremely large gig for Aspect.  I will be leading a training effort in Singapore, US, and EMEA!

I work for Global Knowledge.  If you want to get back in the game, give me a shout.  Any voice technology is in high demand!

Craig

Singapore has got to be one of my favorite cities in the the world!