BT vs. Virgin Media phone line and burglar alarm

SG_Guy

Hello, hope fellow Money Savers can help. We recently changed our phone line from BT to Virgin Media (along with broadband and cable TV). The BT line will be switched off shortly.

Does anyone know what we need to do to make sure the burglar alarm will still work, as this was using the BT line for informing and nightly testing but presumably will stop doing so once BT switches the copper line off? The Virgin Media cable guy refused to touch the burglar alarm and we were wondering if anyone on this forum has faced this situation before.

Thanks!

spike7451

The VM guy is an installer & NOT trained on burglar alarms & rightly refused to touch it.Even us Service Engineers are not trained on alarms.(although I am..)
You need to contact the alarm company to get it connected to the VM line.VM wont touch it.

HTH,
Spike (ex VM Service Eng)

Buzby

It is quite an easy fix - as we were in the same situation. The comms wire drom your alarm box will connect via the BT NTE5 user terminals. Assuming you have the sockets adjacent, simply remove them from the BT NTE5 and copy exactly the same connections on your new VM NTE5. You need to match the same wiring, which most likely will be to user connectors 2 and 5, the colours of these wires is immaterial.

If you are happy at swapping these over, you've saved yourself an alarm company call out fee. If you do not feel confident, then the alarm company needs to be called out and the appropriate fee paid. When the line voltage (of BT's line) is disrupted, them me be a warning that Comms are down, but should reset as soon as the new connection is made.

Heinz

And, assuming the alarm's daily 'check calls' are via an 0870 number, get ready for some big bills.

iniltous

Is you alarm an ABC ( alarm by carrier, like BT Redcare ) or just a dialup alarm, ABC's are always communicating with the alarm monitoring centre so if the line is 'cut' by the bad guy the alarm still goes off in the monitor centre (as well as the usual alarm conditions) a dialup alarm cannot dial the alarm centre if the line has been cut...I dont think VM offer any ABC's but could be wrong

Buzby

I believe ther security industry bulletin in 2007 said barely 0.2% of alarm systems used RedCare, so I don't believe it is much of a concern - the newer systems go for onboard GSM, which is much harder to block.