Feature News
VoIP—Should You Warn Your Customers?
Alternate transmission via radio or cellular means has traditionally been
a back-up, not primary,
means of alarm transmission. What should be done about those existing alarm customers who may cancel their POTS line after the alarm is installed? Some VOIP providers are undertaking to warn their customers on the limitations it can present to an alarm system. But should the alarm company also warn its customers about the potential dangers of using VOIP phone service for transmission?
The short answer is yes. Although there
have been no court cases on this reported issue yet,
As anyone in the industry knows, VoIP is a hot topic.
If he couldn’t have her, no one else would either. The spurned ex-boyfriend had his attack carefully planned.
He left a note and
specific instructions regarding his personal affairs for his father, knowing that after that night he would be dead or in jail. In the dark of night, he drove to her neighborhood and parked down the street from her house. In the past weeks he’d driven by her house enough to notice the alarm company sign freshly posted in the flower bed outside the front door. That would not stop him. He quietly crept into the backyard and used a newly purchased crowbar to smash a basement window. He jumped through the shards of glass, and quickly bounded up the steps to her bedroom, shotgun in hand, and began firing. Her new boyfriend, who was spending the night, was killed immediately. She was shot, then tortured for several hours, and slowly bled to death.
VoIP service can sometimes be spotty and may not work if there is a power outage, making it not ideal for alarm transmission.
Two months later, I was at the home inspecting the alarm system. I’d read all the newspaper articles and seen the TV news pieces on this tragedy, all focusing on how the family was blaming the alarm system’s alleged failure for the murders. Reportedly, the alarm system sent no signals to the monitoring company on that fateful night. So I was not surprised when the letter came from an attorney representing the families, putting my client, an alarm component manufacturer, on notice of an inspection of the alarm system.
At the inspection, we learned one thing right away: the home did not have a working POTS line. The woman had switched to VoIP phone service several weeks before the murder. She made the switch after her alarm system was installed. Knowing this, and ruling out equipment failure through testing, gave us a solid explanation as to why the alarm system did not notify of the murderer’s intrusion. In the end, my client was not sued.
As anyone in the industry knows, VoIP is a hot topic. VoIP service can sometimes
be spotty and may not work if there is a power outage, making it not ideal for alarm transmission. New products and services are being developed to allow alarm systems to reliably communicate when there is no analog phone service. But most alarm systems in place today are designed to communicate via analog phone service.
44
NBFAA Newsline
www.alarm.org
in my view, it is only a matter of time before a plaintiff’s attorney makes
the argument that the
alarm company failed to warn its customer that the alarm system may not work without an analog phone service.
If a court were to analyze this issue it would make a legal determination on whether the alarm company had a duty to warn its customer. To determine whether generally factors:
a duty look at
exists, the
courts following the probability of harm,
the gravity of the resulting injury, and the burden of taking adequate precautions.
2009 Vol. 3
alarm
32
www.honeywell.com/security/hsc
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