Monitored Alarms

Shels_Gar

I've heard Eircom Phonewatch is quite problematic but I don't know of any others....
Who have you got yours with and what kind of prices are you paying for installation/surveying and what does it cost per month?
Cheers.

sinnerboy

there are others . shop around

Eurorunner

Its possible to fit systems that can be hooked up to units which will trip a call to your mobile/email,etc. Has been discussed previously on this forum and others.
Unlikely to be offered by the bigger companies as 'alarm monitoring' is a good little earner.

JPM Security

all alarm companies provide monitoring.if you look in the golden pages and ring a few local guys they will be able to quote you prices over the phone.the average price for monitoring of a house works out about €150 a year. now alternatively you can get your alarm company to install whats called a voice or gsm dialler which means you can monitor your own alarm and you do not have to pay for monitoring each year. all you pay for is the dialler

Villain

Quick 2 cents, Monitored alarms are expensive and not worth much without taking some extra steps.

Firstly I think having a dialer is a better system where the alarm rings your 5 listed numbers in sequence, basically does the same as eircom phone watch for a one off payment of about €150, the only difference is rather than eircom ringing you the alarm does it automatically and if the first number doesn't acknowledge it (by entering keys) it moves onto the 2nd number etc etc.

Now there are two dialers, fixed line which is connected to your standard phone line and then there are GSM dialers which have a sim card in them.

Whether you have eircom phone watch or a dialler installed they are of very little use if your house has a standard phone line connection i.e. if someone wants to break in and make sure no gets dialled they simply cut the phone at the connection i.e. the white box in your wall normally under your meter box.

Now a GSM dialer does stop that risk but criminals can and have used GSM jammers to block the dialler from dialling out.

How do you eliminate this risk don't put your connection in the white box outside the house put it inside the house, BUT leave a "dummy" connection in the white box outside the house so the criminal cuts that and thinks he's stopped the dialler!

Eircom phone watch do test theline each night to make sure its working but that only helps if the criminal is cutting it one night and returning the next night. Anotehr alternative is those with wireless broadband i.e. not coming in through your phone line is to use the broadband connection for a phone line.