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Alarm monitoring over UPC

KoolKid

Here is one thats coming up a lot on the Home Security Forum.
Is there any good reason why Eircom are telling people people alarms can not be monitored by UPC if they switch their phone provider?

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KoolKid

As Altor said UPC doesn't support text. UPC does however support alarm monitoring.
Yet Eircom continue to deny this.
There are also issues with GSM dialers that Eircom don't seem to tell their customers about.
I am still awaiting Eircoms answers ..........

donutheadhomer

KoolKid wrote: »

As Alford said UPC doesn't support text. UPC does however support alarm monitoring.
Yet Eircom continue to deny this.
There are also issues with GSM dialers that Eircom don't seem to tell their customers about.
I am still awaiting Eircoms answers ..........

if i can't get text over the line then no point m e moving to upc then. thanks

eircom: Tony

KoolKid wrote: »

10 days later & no further input from Eircom.
Can a representative from Eircom please state the position on this.
Is this issue still being addressed or is it the policy on this forum for Eircom to simply post up lies then ignore the questions posted. Is this Eircoms out when they don't wan't to answer questions put to them??:mad:

Hi Koolkid
apologies for not replying to your latest posts as my own last post was the official explanation given by PhoneWatch and was in answer to your query at the time.
Although I do accept that you are not satisfied with the answer it does state PhoneWatch's stance re both queries.
Our policy here is to try and answer any query raised on this forum and offer any help we can. I have made various enquiries and have passed on the information available to me. At this time though I am afraid I have no further information, other than that already given, on this subject.
Tony

KoolKid

So Tony do you accept that phonewatch's statement re connecting via UPC is a lie?
If not then you need to stand up and say myself and Altor are lying.
Which is it?
I have also not noticed when you answered if Eircom inform customers of the risks associated with GSM dialers?
I am sorry ,but I find it unacceptable that Eircom answer queries with a lie and then come on and dismiss a thread saying no further information is available .....
Stating policy and posting lies answers nothing.
My questions still remain unanswered ...
Maybe I'll try again in another 10 days ..

fred funk }{

Koolkid, you're not going to get the answers you're looking for here. The simple reason is that eircom know the truth (as we do) so they will not state it publicly.

The truth is that eircom systems do work over UPC, I know this myself as I have connected them myself. They purposely confuse the issue by saying things like "our systems aren't compatible with UPCs digital system" which we all know is bull.
Eircom put out that lie in order to keep
the line rentals. THERE IS NO OTHER REASON.

We also know that gsm monitoring is not secure, that's a fact not an opinion yet eircom are still offering this to their customers without explaining the risks.
I don't think we'll get any definitive answer with this as no matter what they say they will be wrong. If they say there's no problem with them then they're telling lies and if they say there is a security risk then why are they selling them with any prior warning on their security issues.

KoolKid

Thanks Fred, I think you may be right.
If thats the case then is it their policy on this forum to post lies & then choose not to answer the questions they don't like??
I think that is also a big concen here.

eircom: Tony

KoolKid wrote: »

Thanks Fred, I think you may be right.
If thats the case then is it their policy on this forum to post lies & then choose not to answer the questions they don't like??
I think that is also a big concen here.

Hi koolkid

myself and the other moderators on this forum will always attempt to answer any relevant questions posted us, or direct the poster to the relevant eircom section, that is our policy.
However I have already provided my answer based on the information made available to us here and would only be repeating the same. As an open forum, where people are free to post their questions and opinions, I certainly have no intention of lablling anyone as a liar.

As I have suggested in a previous post PhoneWatch have advised me that if you wish to discuss this with their technical staff ( as you do have a lot of technical experience with this particular product and it's installation) to call them on 1850500900 and post us about this.

Again my apologies if this response does not satisfy you but you will have to speak to the appropriate technical section for more information.
Regards
Tony

KoolKid

I have no problem stating the obvious.
The statement that Alarms cannot be monitored over UPC lines is a lie.
It is also obvious Eircon are not willing to answer questions here.
Why Eircom lie to customers re this issue has not been answered.
I don't consider a lie or simply stating policy an answer.
Why Eircom are offering GSM as a solution when there are known issues has never been answered.
Whether Eircom inform customers of the specific risks with GSM diallers has never been answered.
I,and customers of mine,(former Eircom customers) have contacted PW with these questions. Like here,they will not answer them.
So out of my 3 questions one has been answered with a lie and the other 2 have been ignored. Based on that I would again state Eircom are selecting what they choose to answer here. I suspect the next move will be to lock this thread.

bobblepuzzle

This is Eircom, what do you expect? They've been ripping off consumers for decades... indeed a lock is probably in order as Eircom won't give an answer here

KoolKid

8 Days on & still Eircom are refusing to answer questions posted on this forum.:eek::(

As a reminder my questions are:

Why is Eircom lying to customers (and to members here) saying their alarms can not be monitored over a UPC line?
Why are Eircom offering GSM as an alternative when they know there are issues re jamming?
Are Eircom informing customers of the risks & vulnerabilities with GSM monitoring?

Yours patiently
KK:cool:

lifeandtimes

Koolkid seems to me like your trying to get a rise out of the mods of eircom here,looks like they have tried to offer you advice on what they know but you know a lot more then them so why dont you just call the technical staff for phone watch and ask someone who has an in dept knowledge on your subject,asking questions like"why do eircom lie to customers" isnt really a question for this fourm and isnt helping anyone.

LT

KoolKid

As I said above I and others have called PW and got the same lies.
In fairness I asked 3 questions. 1 was answered with a lie.
The other 2 have just been ignored.
If that's the case then it would seem the policy on this forum is for Eircom to ignore the questions they don't wish to answer.
I am not trying to rise the Eircom staff here at all.
They are doing a great job,but they are obviously been lied to as well.
It would also seem there are restrictions to what they can discuss here.

lifeandtimes

ok but how do you know they are lying?
These have to be people who work in a feild that they are very good at and as everyone knows majority of companies record their calls so any lying they would be doing would be recorded and thus taken up by the regulater and then the company would be fined so i dont think eircom really want a massive fine at the moment so i would assume lying would be at a minimum.

KoolKid

Myself and other installers here have alarms monitored over UPC lines.
Who is to monitor lies?
The lies seem to be Eircoms policy on this..
The custom service reps and tech support reps are clearly just saying what they are told to. As I have already explained, an alarm dialler is simply the guts of a normal phone.
If a standard phone connects and can make a call so can an alarm dialler ..
Its that simple.

lifeandtimes

well fair enough if thats what you feel is the problem then take it higher than a boards website,nothing will happen here for you,thats all i was saying anyway,complaining about it to mods on a forum isnt going to get your problem solved and the clearly dont have the answers you want as you have asked and they have said:rolleyes:

LT

KoolKid

Eircom refuse to answer the questions. I have contacted them , others have contacted them. Whay are you saying I am complaining to mods??
The Mods on this forum are:
Darragh, and Dav
They have not commented on this thread & I have not contacted them.
I have asked questions of the Eircom reps here that is what they are here to do.
Again I stress I am not complaining to them I am complaining to Eircom.
As I have said I have no greivence with Mark & Tony whatsoever , they do a great job.
But it seems it is Eircom policy to lie to customers re using UPC lines.
I am not asking unreasonable questions.
The first question is simply asking why Eircom are doing this.
The second question
Why are Eircom offering GSM as an alternative when they know there are issues re jamming?
Has never been answered.
The 3rd question
Are Eircom informing customers of the risks & vulnerabilities with GSM monitoring?
Is a simple yes or no answer yet this has never been answered
After all according to the charter Eircom say

We are also here to communicate in a transparent and open manner .

KoolKid

Another week passes and still it seems Eircom are being selective in what they want to discuss & answer here.
Maybe they should also take a look in the Home Security Forum.
Here is one example of more customers being lied to
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056226316
Still the same questions remain unanswered...

I am not asking unreasonable questions.
The first question is simply asking why Eircom are doing this.
The second question
Why are Eircom offering GSM as an alternative when they know there are issues re jamming?
Has never been answered.
The 3rd question
Are Eircom informing customers of the risks & vulnerabilities with GSM monitoring?
Is a simple yes or no answer yet this has never been answered

And yet Eircom are happy to say

We are also here to communicate in a transparent and open manner .

Thunderbird2

we had an eircom rept call around twice and one of the questions i asked was about their gsm units being jammed.their response was.....if anyone interferes with with the alarm. the monitoring station will know about it instantly. i also asked what would happen if an intruder came in and smashed the panel...his reply was the exactly the same!!!the monitoring station would know straight away. what was even funnier was the fact that i was up a ladder wiring up a Hkc bell box and he still insisted on ringing the doorbell ,when know one answered he called up to me asking if we wanted an eircom phone watch alarm. when i made it even clearer i was putting one in he still insisted on getting phone watch and that he will call back around when the parents were home..he called back that evening ...i brought him in showed him the very newly installed alarm and ask him what was wrong with it that he still had to insist on having it replaced...i payed 500 to alarm every door and window plus 2 beams. they were offering 6 sensors 3 shock/reeds and 3 beams, we have 2 doors and 11 windows, he told us that we would only need the bck door frt door and 1 bay window covered. he was then shown the door

KoolKid

It would appear the sales reps are trained the same as customer service. Just keep repeating yourself but whatever you do dont answer the question.

lucernarian

I thought it was pretty obvious why alarm monitoring over UPC can't work. Suprised it hasn't been mentioned yet!

The biggest reason is a power outage. Those eircom phonewatch units are supposed to work if some intruder cuts power or there is a coincidental blackout etc. Eircom phonelines generally work after the power goes in an area even if the exchange area is affected. The exchange will have at least battery backup and often diesel generators too. I understand most conventional mobile phone masts and sites have on-site generation/batteries but this wouldn't be as consistent as the eircom backup.

Now, if the power goes out for the UPC customer, they're fecked. Unless the cable modem is wired to a car battery or somesuch. And if there is a blackout, even in the immediate area only, the cable node will probably be taken out too as I don't believe UPC have any backup power for their field network.

As for the GSM units being jammed, the thief would have to use that and also ensure that any phone line is cut too. A GSM jammer would take quite a bit of power to deploy and would probably be complicated as a result. It would take more than a dodgy spark plug, I'll put it that way:) Now, this extra effort and hassle to pull off the jamming would not make as much sense compared to targeting somewhere easier.

KoolKid

A simple battery back up to your modem prevents any problems with the power being cut.A modem uses very little power so nothing like a car battery would be needed. After all, everything else on the alarm is backed up by battery.
GSM jammers do not require a lot of power. They can be as basic as an old mobile. Also ,because they are so cheap, they are, in some cases, being left on site to prevent calling after the intruders leave.

lucernarian

The amount of power a GSM jammer uses would vary with how strong the existing GSM signal is in an area. Some jammers will naturally need much more power than others.

Oh, so the UPC modem "simply" needs a battery?! If 0.1% of installed modems even have an uninterruptible power supply, I'd be suprised. I believe the PW alarm has 24 hours of backup when everything is working fine. If we assume that the cisco modem uses about 12 watts, (most modems/routers I've seen use between 7 and 15 W) then a battery that's got half the capacity of a brand new car battery would be needed or even more again.

Until there are solutions (that are compliant with IS/EN50131) offered to by the alarm installation company for battery backup of UPC's phone service in houses, there won't be any support by eircom PW for this. If your house insurance receives a discount for using PW, then something like the above could invalidate any claims if something goes wrong.

KoolKid

I have seen various jammers tested. You are only going to require a lot of power to cover a large area. The hand held units are powered by the equivalent of a large mobile phone battery. There are even some that will work on your standard 9volt battery.
These will easily block any signals around your average house.
My UPC has a 1 amp power supply. In reality it uses much less than that.
A boxed power supply will be able to power and back up these devices.
After all we do so with radio which is accepted as uptown standards.
As regards EN standards I think GSM without polling will be removed once insurance companies cop on to the risks.
We also protect the phone line with a contact on the phone box if its accessible.
Something else Eircom doesn't do.
This gives an early warning prior to losing the line.
This along with monitoring over IP with polling (available soon) will be way more secure than GSM without polling.
None of the above, however,accounts for Eircom refusing to answer why they are offering GSM as an option without informing customers of the risks,or why they lie and say monitoring won't work with UPC.

lucernarian

UPC may "work" as far as polling and reporting are concerned but I don't think it's acceptable to use while their equipment is not standards-compliant.

Putting a contact on the "eircom box" is useless or impossible in the majority of cases. The majority of housing stock do not have an external access box (forget what they're called) where an external-grade cable is connected to internal phone cable using a junction box or joiner of some kind. Also, the external cable is easily accessible in the large majority of cases. Wires running up a pole are easily cut. Even if the main DP cable is protected by a steel conduit, the house wire is often just tacked on the pole or is within plastic polymer tubing. A hatchet would easily take care of it.

As for manhole covers, they're easily lifted off with something as simple as a claw hammer or the stereotypical crowbar. But that's not a reason against using the phone line for security per se, I think it means there should be a GSM used in conjunction with a fixed connection.

GSM polling may have the serious issue of not working during certain times, e.g. new year's eve.

KoolKid

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

UPC may "work" as far as polling and reporting are concerned but I don't think it's acceptable to use while their equipment is not standards-compliant.

There is no standard in place yet to deal with these methods of monitoring.
Until such standards are written we will work with what we have.In my interpretation there are no definitions in place to exclude monitoring & signaling in such a manner. If it was perceived that this would be an issue I doubt the manufacturers and the monitoring stations would be gearing up for IP monitoring.

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

Putting a contact on the "eircom box" is useless or impossible in the majority of cases. The majority of housing stock do not have an external access box (forget what they're called) where an external-grade cable is connected to internal phone cable using a junction box or joiner of some kind. Also, the external cable is easily accessible in the large majority of cases. Wires running up a pole are easily cut. Even if the main DP cable is protected by a steel conduit, the house wire is often just tacked on the pole or is within plastic polymer tubing. A hatchet would easily take care of it.

When it comes to security there will always be the what if scenario.
I could install A Digi,A GSM Back up, A radio back up to that, polling on the GSM & a contact on the phone box & some genius will come out with a what if scenario where it will fail.
But compared to Eircom's currant situation which is an unprotected phone line, or GSM if no phoneline, it is a step up.
Given the choice between GSM & a UPC line with phone box protected, where possible, and a battery back up power supply , the UPC option is more secure IMO.

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

GSM polling may have the serious issue of not working during certain times, e.g. new year's eve.

I agree, a very good point. Likewise GSM would be very unreliable on new years eve either way.

Anyway none of this defers from the fact that Eircom won't answer 3 simple questions.

1) Why are they saying monitoring will not work over UPC when clearly it does?
2) Why are they offing GSM as a solution when clearly there are serious issues with reliability
3) Do Eircom inform the customer of these issues when selling them the GSM option??

gerryk

You might remember that not that long ago, eircom had this big push to eliminate WEP encryption in their routers. I'm pretty sure this was due to a liability issue with basically not informing customers how rubbish WEB is. Now, I'm pretty sure the same liability issue would exist in the recommendation of GSM as a signalling method for alarm systems.
GSM blockers are available for as cheap as €20, and for less than €100 you can get a high-powered (>1W ERP) model that will obiterate GSM (and 3G, EDGE etc) signals for a radius of 100m.
Now this is common knowledge, so (and this is just my opinion, IANAL) any company recommending a signalling mechanism that can be so easily subverted, would need to inform the customer of the potential failure modes.
Also, the statement that they would know immediately in the event of tampering is just plain false. The only way this could be the case is if a line is kept continually open to each and every alarm system out there. An SMS every 10 minutes or so would give an awareness granularity of 10 minutes... i.e. as soon as the next message was not received, but this is not how the notification systems works.

KoolKid

No matter how good polling or regular reporting sounds, it it just not practical to action these missing reports. How often have you got a text message sent hours before?
Are they going to call every customer whose GSM unit fails to poll on the likes of new years eve.
I am not saying there is a definitive solution. Security is about keeping up with trends & technology.
Quite simply Eircom don't like change.They are still using one of the most basic wireless systems around. They are still using GSM while most in the industry dismiss it as unsecure and they are still as arrogant as ever in dismissing customer queries. That does not do you any good in business & it does not go down well here either.
So at, Mark & Tony I again ask

1) Why are Eircom saying monitoring will not work over UPC when clearly it does?
2) Why are Eircom offing GSM as a solution when clearly there are serious issues with reliability
3) Do Eircom inform the customer of these issues when selling them the GSM option??

Come on show some respect for your customers and the public & answer these simple questions.

BostonB

Accessing the UPC line is simple either via the box in the wall, if its mounted on the side of the gutter, facia, or simply from lifting the manhole in the pavement. its completely insecure.

Never mind that mind is up and down more then yoyo. Its goes down for at least 5 mins every night between 12 and 1. I assume that UPC resetting something their end.

Find the house with a transformer, and you take a whole street down.

KoolKid

I have not had the issues with the resets in a long time.
I have had issues with line dropping on regular land lines also.
That is not at issue here. As I said in a post above no matter what security you put in place there will be a what if scenario of events where that will fail.
Yes a UPC line can be cut, yes a phone line can be cut. These points can be alarmed, its not 100% secure but it is making life more difficult for an intruder.
I ,for one, would prefer for a potential intruder to have to physically cut a cable rather than walk up with a jammer in their pocket. Also, given the choice, I would prefer an intruder to have to lift a manhole than just snip a phone line.Its a little more difficult & a little more awkward.
However the issues here are that Eircom lie to customers & to users here & say an alarm can not be monitored over a UPC line. When caught out in that lie they choose to ignore the questions . It is no obvious that Eircom, while using this forum, are selective in what they want to answer & discuss.
They have never answered why they lie about the ability to monitor alarms over UPC.
They have never answered why they offer a GSM solution when there are serious issues with jamming.
They have never answered whether they make customers aware of the issues when selling them this unreliable GSM solution.

DaSilva

Hey, my old boss was/is an engineer in the alarm business. I remember having a conversation with him once about Eircom PhoneWatch and him saying something along the lines of,
"The PhoneWatch system doesn't use phonelines in a regular manner, it communicates over some ancient protocol that operates outside the regular voice frequency bands.".

If this is the case, and it very well might not be, then that might be the source of the problem, as UPC uses a different telephone system altogether (VOIP?).

You guys are talking about other dialers working over UPC which makes sense, seeing as regular monitoring stations/dialer makers won't have the same access to the telephone network that Eircom would have, therefore they would design it to use the phone network the same way a phone does.

Anyway, take my info with a pinch of salt, because A) I could be remembering wrong, and

I hope I'm wrong, as I would love to see Eircom get more awful publicity, as they are an awful awful company.