Re: New 10 digit dialing problems

["Stanley Barthfarkle" <sbarth@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Effective 17 June 2006, residents of the two area codes 613 and 819 in
> Eastern Canada will be required to dial the area code before the number in
> order to make any kind of local call. This has a major bearing on how
> alarm panels work, since they too have to dial a 10 digit receiver number,
> and I'm sure most alarm companies are rushing to reprogram their customers
> panels. However, I have to wonder what is going to happen to all those
> many thousands of older panels which have been acquired through
> aquisitions by the larger companies, and which are not capable of being
> dialed into to make the necessary changes to the receiver number. It
> doesn't seem practical (or even logistically possible) to make a visit to
> each panel to program the changes, especially for the largest companies
> with multi thousands of these panels in service.
>
> I have to wonder about those customers who will never know their panels
> are not working until they fail at a time when they are most needed, since
> at least one of the largest companies routinely doesn't use automatic test
> signals, and as such, no "failure to communicate" troubles will ever show
> up on the keypads. Also, you have to wonder how many fires will go
> undetected early because smoke detectors are unable to call in to the
> monitoring station, and the bearing that will have on liabilities at all
> levels... (Hello Prudential !! )
>
> I know 10 digit dialing has been put into place in many other areas of
> North America previously. Can anyone that's gone through it shed any light
> on what happened in their area when it came about, and what sorts of
> things we can expect to see here.



We had to do it here in the early 90's, when I worked for a high-end resi
Westec dealer with about 4000 non-downloaded accts, consisting of about 1000
Westec systems and 3000+ various other brands. I think the number of systems
affected was at least 1500, since the high-end Western suburbs and the
outlying rural areas were getting the new area code. The owner had started
years earlier and used every panel at one time or another, before buying the
local Westec franchise (when it was still very well engineered stuff, albeit
proprietary). Running service for that outfit was a real adventure...  ;-)
DTI-550 or 665, anyone? Learned a lot, though. Burned a Boatload of 693
PROMs.

Changing the programming in all those systems was a royal freaking pain, and
involved about 18 months of extra service calls by installers and service
techs alike...something like 1 or 2 per day per tech., in addition to their
regular work. We sent the Silent Knight/Napco guy on those, the Ademco/DTI
guy on those, etc. I think we charged $75 per acct... and sent a letter in
advance explaining the need to re-program. The service scheduler would map
several in an area, and let the installers have a few while they were close.
Several customers with simpler systems were able to do it with a tech over
the phone at no charge. (tested afterward, of course) There was a 2 yr grace
period in which the old 7 digit numbers still worked, so that helped.

By the time the phone company did it to us again in '96, I had started my
own company and programmed ALL my systems to dial 10 digit numbers, even for
local calls, so the area code addition didn't affect us.