atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Just had to pass this along

My customer, the one that upgraded their Inter-Tel Axxess to a 5000 with SIP trunking etc called me with a problem...

In the porting of several numbers over to the SIP trunking, they were left with only one POTS line for the building fire alarm.
Luckily there was a spare line that they were paying for who knows how many years, I hooked the RJ31X to that line and they were okay.
I also discovered that the burglar alarm has had NO dialtone for approx 2 weeks, having also been on one of the ported lines.
I hooked it up to the Fax line in the office until they can decide what they want to do.
Why their phone system vendor did not deal with this is beyond me, but I am not complaining. I got to save the day!

Any decent telephone man always asks the customer "Do you have an alarm system?" before doing any major service changes.

Any decent alarm company expects a test signal periodically (once a day/week/month) from its commercial subscribers and will investigate if the test signal is not received.

Agreed on both!
They realized they had this extra line, had AT&T come locate it, and it was terminated to a block that was designated for an old LMC circuit, a direct line to the city PD when they used to monitor alarms.
Who knows what other lines sit connected and get paid for every month!

That's why I ask to see a new client's phone bill. For businesses, it's very often that I find unused equipment charges. Even found one client still paying for a 1A2 system even though Bell had removed the equipment when they upgraded to a newer system.

For both business & residential it's extra lines that used to be used for dial-up internet. Of course Bell didn't advise them to remove them when they went with DSL. Had a client with 6 old lines that were for dial-up long after they finally got DSL.

The initial issue should have gone like this....

Customer orders new line .... gets anticipated date from telco and notifies vendor.

On that date the telco shows up to begin work .... customer calls vendor to inform them that telco is on site.

Telco installs new line to the demarc and tests it ..... vendor hooks it into the system and programs accordingly.

We do this on a regular basis and never have any issues ..... as much as that telco tech was trying to be helpful he was out of line to be dealing with something he was not competent to perform.

I agree completely, Dave. My customer did (I thought) a fair amount of documentation and planning but there is always that old saying "stuff happens".
This 'upgrade' consisted of no more than six vendors...phone system vendor, customer's IT guy, 2 internet/SIP providers, plus the bit of cabling they had me do.
I am surprised they were able to make calls on the Monday morning of the cutover!

Telco tests it, tags it at demarc..........done. Well, customer signature on ticket I would assume.

Qustion.: AT&T IR techs, as a rule, do not go past the demarc nor would they carry any sort of equipment or cords on their truck. Could it be possible the tech was an AT&T Datacomm tech who is authorized to work on the customer side of the demarc?

Why would he be authorized to go beyond the Demarc for issue not related to data.

I still think it was a residential tech who was beyond his knowledge or training.

I had that issue last week when a manager from McD's called. Three lines, (1 for phone, the other two he never ordered). xxx-aaaa, xxx-bbbb, xxxcccc.

Tech connected to xxx-bbbb, when he should have connected to xxx-aaaa. The other two lines were tagged with the wrong numbers. Manager was on site, so if he didn't know which was the number to connect, you'd think he'd have the brains to ask. So, I had to make an emergency visit as "All my suppliers have been given xxx-aaaa (which was also the Billing Number).

You put a RJ31X on a Fire Alarm line? The last I was told all Fire Alarm lines have to be hard wired and a RJ31X is a big no no. First, nothing should be sharing the Fire Alarm line and second the RJ31X might cause a false good line to the monitoring service if the Fire Alarm became disconnected.