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Article by Steve Nutt

Rightly so, there are very tough standards in place for manufacturers and installers of high security equipment in Australia and New Zealand. The AS/NZS 2201.5:2008 standards are well within the technical reach of most security industry manufacturers, however at the time of writing, the costs of achieving certification are so high that only three companies have been able to manage it so far. The 2 incumbent Telco companies, Telstra and Optus, were first on the list. The 3rd is a British company who are a spin-off from the Telco British Telecom. Small and medium sized manufacturers, including some highly respected manufacturers that have been in the security industry for many years, do not seem to have the finances to afford certification and risk losing out to the large corporates.

A more interesting inconsistency in the standard is at the class 1 end of the graded market and the regulations for upgrading a system that currently uses a PSTN landline and an alarm dialler. You would think that by adding line supervision, an upgrade to any IP solution would be an improvement and meet the new standard. Unfortunately, this is not a view shared by the AS/NZ standards committee.

The issue is that there are around 900,000 dialler systems using PSTN landlines and Telstra and Optus would stand to lose a large chunk of recurring revenue should these contracts be cancelled. Not just from line rental, but from the calls that are made by monitored back to base alarm systems throughout Australia and New Zealand on a daily basis.

In light of the above situation, it should be a little clearer why the standards were “influenced” so that any upgrade of such systems must travel over a private network and not over the public Internet. It should also come as no surprise to you that Telstra and Optus are the only 2 companies large enough to own their own private networks. Great news if you are an Optus or Telstra shareholder, but not such good news for consumers who are owners of a back to base monitored alarm system.

As if that was not bad enough for fair competition, the situation is compounded by a large percentage of Alarm installation Companies. Enforcement of the standards are seen as a convenient way to reject upgrade requests for IP and hold onto the rebates they receive from the Telco companies and the 1300 security industry rebate system. Alarm bureaus and Monitoring Centre owners receive a good portion of the 25 cents consumers are charged every time their alarm panel makes a 1300 call. It is well known within the security industry that alarm calls over the Internet are free, yet a consumer who arms and disarms their alarm system just twice a day using a 1300 number will be charged over per month on those calls alone.

Time for change ?

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