Will a Digiweb Metro phone line work with monitored alarm

semaj

Folks,
I currently have an eircom phone line & ADSL. I’m considering moving to Digiweb and getting there broadband and phone package (metro product), but I have a monitored alarm which uses the existing eircom phone line.
Will a monitored alarm work with the phone lines Digiweb provides. ???

Gigiwagga

If I could refer to the first part of your question: "Will Digiweb's Metro phone line work. ? " Not very well I'm afraid. I moved to Metro 8 months ago and have yet to get a decent phone service from them. I was hoping to report my main phone line to them from Eircon( via Esat: long story) but because of the poor quality phone service I had to keep my eircom line and continue to pay line rental charges. I also bought a new phone with answering machine as I would no longer have eircon's answering service, alas, all to no avail. You cannot trust metro's phone service, simple as that. There are countless others who have had similar problems with their phone service who have posted here.
On the other hand their human support is very helpful, their Techs try their best. I just think the technology their using is half arsed and thats where the problem lies. I had no broadband service AT ALL yesterday. It was back today in a manner of speaking, still lots of packet loss, and high pings etc.
But seriously, forget about using their phone service.:)

jor el

semaj wrote:

Will a monitored alarm work with the phone lines Digiweb provides.

They don't actually provide a line, they just give you a VOIP service. So, if the broadband service fails (as wireless broadband often does) then you loose the phone. Also, I guess it will all depend on how the alarm is currently connected to you phone line. You'll need to connect the alarm to an ATA somehow.

If the service is as bad as info@williamrua points out then you'd be pretty much wasting your money on the monitored alarm service.

watty

If the Radio connection is good, then with the recent firmware upgrades the phone service is fine. An additional firmware upgrade is needed to support modems/fax. I don't know how soon that is. So right now, today, the Eircom Phonewatch will not work on the Metro.

info@williamrua has a problem with signal so the phone experience would not be representative.

Note that the Eircom Monitoring uses Internet type dialup and on an unknown percentage of existing systems it doesn't work reliably unless you have seen your line work well with your PC.

However if you have ADSL then the line is working fine for the phone based alarm system. You are also in the lucky minority of people who can get ADSL in Ireland.

watty

jor el wrote:

They don't actually provide a line, they just give you a VOIP service. So, if the broadband service fails (as wireless broadband often does) then you loose the phone. Also, I guess it will all depend on how the alarm is currently connected to you phone line. You'll need to connect the alarm to an ATA somehow.

If the service is as bad as info@williamrua points out then you'd be pretty much wasting your money on the monitored alarm service.

The Cable Modem used with Metro has two phone ports built in. The equivalent of two ATAs.

However while the phone service is fine for most people, at the moment the Phonewatch would not be supported. As well as fax/modem support Digiweb will be adding voicemail and a range of other voice features to the phone service.

Now also when installers check signal they do not install if it would result in a poor service. A few early installs had not good enough signal quality.

fisab

What about those self-monitoring dialers where the system can alert some phone numbers when there is a false alarm etc.
It would be great if Metro worked rather than getting an expensive GSM dialler.

watty

It might work and Phonewatch might work. I don't know anyone that has tried.

BTW a signifcant proportion of Phonewatch doesn't actually work at all as the dialup line is not good enough to support modem at all. I think it connects to Internet POP number rather than direct dial to another modem. Not sure.

If you have a system and it has a test feature and you try it on Metro and it works, it is as likely to continue to work as on ordinary phone line.