UHS helps solve VoIP problem for central stations

ATLANTA--As homeowners and businesses abandon landline communication and migrate to VoIP, UHS, a broadband security company, has a solution that can help centrals continue to communicate with their accounts. Coming from the Australian telecommunications market, and setting up shop here in 2004, UHS outfitted Central Alarm Control of South Miami, Fla., and Alarm Center, Inc. of Lacey, Wash., with its system the UltraConnect this spring. An end-to-end managed solution, UHS has a strategic partnership with an AT&T network data center in Georgia. The system works through a communicator, which plugs into the bandwidth line at the end user's location. The signals shoot through an encrypted tunnel and transfer from the data center to the central. Another feature of the system is that a central knows instantly if the panel is not communicating. Jack McCurdy, general manager at UHS, cited the example that sometimes, in commercial sectors, the alarm system is placed on a dial tone line often in an obscure place that is the first to get disconnected when there is a revenue shortfall. "We give them the capability of polling the panel very frequently," he said. Currently, the company is working with a few more unnamed wholesale and retail alarm companies to implement the service. UHS is also in the beginning stages of marketing the service in the United Kingdom through a relationship with a British telecom partner, McCurdy said. Well aware of the shift in communications as phone carriers trek toward IP communications, McCurdy said, "The dial tone, which has been the primary line of communication for alarm companies, is swiftly going away." This migration leaves central stations in jeopardy when it comes to receiving alarm signals. "One of the driving factors for all central stations is that alarm companies are losing revenues to VoIP migrations," he said.