Need an Alarm Dialer in a Location With No Phone line?

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Vacation homes and cottages are one of the largest investments most people make, next to their own homes. However they are also often seasonal, and as such left alone and unoccupied for extended periods of times or even entire seasons. With cellular coverage constantly improving across the country many home owners are opting to disconnect or remove their existing land line services.

One of the problems with disconnecting your property from a land line service is that you lose the ability to use services such as temperature alarm dialers which are often required by insurance companies or at the very least can reduce your property insurance. One way around this is by using any number of fixed cellular terminals. Another bonus to going cellular rather than land line is you can choose to only activate the service during the months or seasons the property is not occupied. Many cottage owners may leave the property unoccupied all winter and with a very inexpensive cellular plan can have a phone connection at the property during these off months.

To have an alarm dialer which operates on the cellular networks home owners have three different options, each with it's own pros and cons.

1. Choose an alarm panel which has a built in cellular dialer (usually this is a GSM dialer). This can be one of the easiest to install because the dialer is already ready to go, however they can be locked into a certain provider or technology so it may not work for you at your location and they can be expensive. Also you would be committing to constantly being on a cellular network even if someday you reconnected the land line services or moved the dialer to a location with a land line, or a location where the provider you were with does not provide coverage.

2. A device which connects to an active cell phone (usually via Bluetooth) and than has a phone jack to plug ANY device which requires a phone line into. This units are typically very inexpensive, however they require you to have a turned on, active, and working cell phone to leave at the property with a Bluetooth connection between the phone and terminal which will not fail. I would only recommend this solution for very temporary coverage, it does work but I would not want to count on it for an extended period of time (such as an entire season).

3. My personal favorites are labeled as "Fixed Cellular Terminals". These units are initially expensive to purchase but can be programmed to work with any provider and have excellent coverage with the included antennas, and often external antennas for improved coverage are available. They connect directly the cellular network of your choosing, can have extremely low operating costs (You only need to pay for the minutes you will be using) and provide a phone jack which you could plug any device which requires a phone line into (fax machines, dial up modems etc.).

Any of the above three options will work for most property owners and will provide a previously disconnected location the ability to be monitored and protected remotely!

Nathan McBride
Absolute Automation Inc.
Check us out at - http://www.absoluteautomation.com/ for all your alarm dialer needs!