Copper Line Sunset
POTS Line Retirement and Your Fire Alarm
Copper phone lines are being retired. If your fire alarm still dials out over one, its path to the central station is on a clock.
What is actually changing
For decades a commercial fire alarm reported to its central station over ordinary copper telephone lines — plain old telephone service, POTS. Carriers are retiring that infrastructure.
For a business, losing a copper line is usually an inconvenience. For a fire alarm it is different in kind: the panel keeps working, keeps detecting, and keeps sounding locally — but nobody offsite is told any more. No dispatch for an alarm in an empty building, and no notification of a trouble signal either.
The reason this is worth acting on early rather than waiting is that nothing visible happens when it breaks. The building carries on exactly as before. Plenty of systems have already lost reporting and nobody found out until the next inspection.
VERIFY (fire side): this page deliberately gives no dates or deadlines for the POTS sunset, because they vary by carrier and area. Confirm current local timelines before adding any.
How to tell if this affects you
- Your panel has dedicated phone lines running to it, often the only thing left on them.
- You are still billed for a phone line nobody makes calls on.
- Your monitoring predates roughly the last decade and has never been changed over.
- Your panel reports a communication or line fault, intermittently or constantly.
- You have no idea whether your system currently reports — which is itself the answer worth resolving.
Any of those is worth a phone call. Testing whether the system actually reports is a definite question with a definite answer.
What the change involves
Replacing a dial-out path means fitting a cellular or IP communicator at the panel and re-establishing the connection to the central station. Cellular units report over the mobile network and do not depend on building wiring or your internet service; IP units use the building's network.
Which is right depends on your panel, the signal where the panel is mounted, and how your network is managed. It is not usually a large job, and it is considerably smaller than the panel replacement people often assume it requires.
Two things worth doing at the same time: confirm the panel itself is in good order, since a communicator on a failing panel solves half a problem, and get the monitoring account documented properly so the next owner or manager is not in the same position. Both fold naturally into an annual inspection.
See also fire alarm monitoring.
POTS retirement FAQs
How do I know if my fire alarm uses a phone line?
If your panel has one or two dedicated phone lines running to it — often labelled as such, and often the only thing still on that line — it almost certainly dials out to the central station. If you are not sure, we can tell you in a few minutes on site, and testing whether it actually still reports is part of an annual inspection.
What replaces a phone line for fire alarm reporting?
A cellular or IP communicator. Cellular units report over the mobile network and do not depend on building wiring; IP units use the building's internet connection. Which suits you depends on the panel you have, signal strength at the panel location and how your network is set up. We will tell you which after looking at it.
What happens if the line goes away and I do nothing?
The panel loses its path to the central station. Locally it may still sound, but nobody offsite is told — not for an alarm, and not for a trouble signal either. The building carries on as normal, which is exactly why this goes unnoticed. It also tends to surface as an inspection finding, which puts you on someone else's timetable.
Still dialing out over copper?
Call us and we will tell you what your panel supports and what changing it involves. Free estimates on every job.