Hi Elderly mother getting fibre broadband installed shortly. The package involves switching her landline from copper to fibre (voip). She has a Bosch hts12 caveo seniors alert system currently working on the copper line. Does anyone happen to know if the caveo supports voip? Thanks
You should be aware that not all alarm systems will work with all of the VOIP adaptors. I suspect that the alarm system will have a battery backup, but you will also need to consider that your broadband router and VOIP adaptor will fail during a power cut.
I know my mothers system had to be the first device on the phone line, as it auto disconnected all other devices to ensure it had a line when it connected to the call centre, and it did not use the broad band as that seems to fail more than the phone, specially with a power cut, it rang the call centre if the pendent detected a shock i.e. fall, button pressed, loss of power, smoke alarms, or being out of bed at night over a set time. It as said did not use the broadband so fibre would not affect it, it works on phone line.
Openreaches decision to go fibre all the way had ramifications that are only just being aired in public and now under the gaze of the parliament. The main one being that during a power outage, these VOIP phones will not work unlike traditional copper wire telephone systems with 50v batteries in the exchange. openreach argues that their design was approved by the governing bodies and phone line providers would supply VOIP adaptors for free. It’s only recently the public and the press have woken up to the fact that these adaptors need power supply. In many homes, especially those lived in by the elderly, often have a phone socket in the hall with no socket within sight ! An issue in itself as the SMPS wall warts often have very short leads. many internet providers are now supplying routers with a VOIP socket in the back. In theory any old device will work with a VOIP, but like anything technological, there will be some that won’t .
A traditional tone dialling telephone (or MF4 to use its proper name), uses two frequencies out of a group of 8 to signify each button press. How well it works with a VOIP adaptor depends on how close the frequencies are to what they should be, and what level of error is acceptable to the VOIP adaptor. Typically the decoders on BT exchanges allowed quite a large error in frequencies.
Thank you @quasar9 that is interesting, clearly it would need some form of UPS so it will work with no power, taken 5 days to get parts of Wales power back on, and the whole idea of the elderly alarm system is to inform the call centre if there is a power failure, so it must work with no mains power. I have for years had one non cordless phone so I can call the power supplier if I loose power, the EE mast here was damaged with the winds and only got mobile signal back yesterday. No power means in most homes no heat, even with gas or oil still needs mains power to use it.
We have no mobile signal and there is no phone box in the village anymore. I asked BT what will happen in the event of a power cut once we transfer to digital voice and they advised that they will be providing power backup devices where required. They have no stock at present but this will become available in March.