Scan Alert

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SSSCORP

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Maybe everyone thought this was a thing of the past, well...
Recently I found 5 of these Scan alert lines at a customers business park.
Although i have never had to work on these, I did find there was 0.00VDC on the line and when my test-set was on the line I heard nothing. Other than calling the monitoring company or the phone company, how do you verify the STU is communicating to the monitoring center?
 
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A scan alert line is a telepone company provided circuit that has a STU at the customers locations (STU is provided by the service company) the Scan alert line runs to the central office and passes through a mcroprocessor of some kind - The phone service provider is cnstantly monitoring the line making sure it is not off hook, from there it runs to the monitoring station to there receiving equipment. What I expected was to find 50VDC on the circuit like a normal phone line, however I discovered no voltage present and it was a dry line (surprise) I had to cotact the monitoring company which required me to spend allot of time getting "passcode" from the owner, then attempting to expline wat infomration I needed from the monitoring center to an under trained opperator. I needed them to "Ping" the STU to see if they got a return signal. this is the only way I was able to determine the integritey of the line other than contacting the phone company. This is stupid because Scan Alert is suppose to be going away, however if you have a Scan Alert the phone company is allowing you to keep it untill you terminate service. There are NO new Scan Alert lines.
 
Qwest link

Qwest link

Most of te info I got fr Scan alert was from the Qwest web site.
I do not see an explanation of how else to test the integrity of the line.
 
ScanAlert

ScanAlert

It provides Grade AA phone line security for digital communicators (dialers) as required for financial institutions and high risk businesses such as jewelry stores. It also can provide a limited number of signaling channels for alarm communications and such.

The idea is that the telco would notify the alarm company if a phone line was cut to disable the alarm system. It was not very installer friendly because there were limitations on wire distance from the central office, ringer equivalence issues (how many phone could be connected to a line), and problems with noisey lines.

The service has been almost universally replaced by wireless links and in some cases internet connections.

All Telco demarcs that contain ScanAlert circuits are suppose to be labeled with a bright orange decal but it's been a long time since the service originated.
 
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