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Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Changing Phone service could have been disasterous for this business owner


A customer of mine a very high end restaurant in Butler county
recently decided to change there phone service from a hardwired phone service provided by Consolidated to Armstrong cable digital IP service. and it could have been disastrous as unknown to the owner and the cable installer the Fire Alarm was not properly wired back into the new phone service instead when they walked in this morning the Fire and burglar alarm panels where in trouble because they had not sent in the daily test which is required by NFPA 72 fire code.
This restaurant experienced over $3000,000.00 in damaged last winter when a valve was bypassed on a sprinkler system which should have been tampered and was not and luckily the burg system caught the leak and triggered getting the police and owner there . But this might bit have been the case this time as both alarms had no phone service. Now as a back up on Fire and burglar alarm systems that are high risk I always install outside sounding devices and strobes to get attention should the phone lines go out and alarm not transmit and this has saved my customers several times over the years but there is always a delay getting a response from time the alarm goes off to some one hearing the alarm and notifying 911.
so once again as a precaution I will be installing a cellular back up system on these alarms as a back up precaution .I always encourage customers to install cellular back up but it costs extra and I understand when they do not want to do it but as you can see it can be a very valuable service and prevent needless tragedy and heart ache. In one case a previous customer of mine switched phone service said nothing and then had a process line freeze up and cause over a million dollar loss in productivity.

There needs to be a law mandated that cable and phone company's be required to notify alarm company's when phone service is changed to prevent these problems as I have already had customers over the years change phone service not tell me and fires and flooding due to broken pipes etc has caused major issues with major dollar damages. all because people are trying to save a buck.

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