Fire Alarm/Elevator Phone Lines

[Douglas Stewart]

Does anyone have an experience with these types of phone lines? My understanding is that there must be two POTS lines for the fire alarm and one for each elevator. The building I'm working for is paying almost $1000/month for four of these lines. Is this normal? Does anyone have any resources where I can read about the requirements for these lines? Are these lines typically serviced by the major telecoms like ATT or are there other service providers where we could potentially save money here?

[Matt Clark]

@Douglas Stewart yes, I’m the past these lines had to be POTS lines for the sake of dependability. However in more recent years (at least here in Virginia) we were allowed to use VOIP lines from a major telecom company and it saved a little bit of money. And the evolution continues... apparently cellular networks are now considered reliable enough. We are in the process of converting all of our lines over to cellular dialers that will only be $25/month per dialer. As a redundant backup, the alarm company is also connecting the fire panels to our wireless networks, so if the cellular network is down the panel can still connect with the monitoring center via internet.