Ensuring your monitoring provider is digitally ready: top tips from our webinar

9 min read - Written by Hollie Barnes

A digitally ready monitoring provider is crucial for the success of your own digital transition and the continued safety of your telecare services. Our recent webinar explored why this is so important and how to check they’re able to meet your needs today and tomorrow.

As we shift from an analogue to digital world, it's vital your monitoring provider stays up to date with these changes. However, it's not always easy to tell if your provider is prepared for digital ‘behind the scenes’ at your Alarm Receiving Centre.

Our latest webinar focused on helping housing providers get to grips with what a digitally ready provider looks like in practice. We provided a straightforward breakdown of the main technical considerations and how these affect the continuity of your services.

Key takeaways covered why monitoring providers must be able to:

Handle SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), as this plays a central role in modern digital communications – even if your equipment is still analogue.

Support a range of digital equipment, with the ability to manage high volumes of data and deal with multiple communication channels.

Offer dual signal monitoring (for both analogue and digital devices) and support analogue to digital converters to steer you through this transition period.

Speakers at the webinar included Appello Managing Director, Craig Barlow, and our Chief Technical Officer, Carl Atkey. This was the fourth in our digital switchover series explaining critical topics for housing providers.

The shift to SIP as we say goodbye to analogue

We began the seminar with a brief overview of how communication networks have evolved from the analogue Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) through to ISDN, which uses copper and fibre lines to transmit voice and data as digital signals.

Now, however, we’re moving towards a purely digital network. PSTN will be shut down in January 2027, while ISDN is being switched off now, which risks a sudden loss of service if your monitoring provider is not ready.

The role of SIP in digital communications

The replacement for ISDN is SIP (Session Initiation Protocol). This may not be as familiar a technology just yet but it plays a central role in digital communications.

Our Chief Technical Officer, Carl Atkey, described how SIP works over the internet as a core component of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), acting as the 'digital handshake' that sets up and ends various voice communications.

This is the new modern standard, offering a number of benefits for both monitoring providers and for housing providers, including:

Clear two-way voice communication between the monitoring centre and a user's telecare device for more reliable calls, as well as a more resilient and secure connection for alarms.

Compatibility with All-IP networks for uninterrupted service and compatibility with new digital telecare devices.

Ability to integrate with other digital services, such as video communication, paving the way for a more advanced offerings in the future.

Carl stressed that monitoring providers must have their own digital infrastructure in place to handle SIP. Without this, they’re likely to experience problems when ISDN is switched off, including first time call failures, service disruptions and compromised security.

As Craig commented, “The shift to SIP is not a voluntary move to a new technology; it's happening to everybody. This means monitoring providers have a lot to do to ensure SIP works really well, as there's a huge difference in how calls are received. The important thing is to understand a) when ISDN is being removed for your monitoring provider as, from that point, you’re relying on SIP, and b) what preparations they have made for this, as the impact on your services could be substantial if they're not ready.”

Testing for SIP compatibility

The only way to be sure your monitoring provider is ready for SIP is to ask them! Now is the time to have honest discussions to confirm what development work they’ve done to prepare and what testing they have carried out.

Carl explained that rigorous testing needs to take place for both analogue and digital equipment:

For analogue equipment, you must verify your monitoring centre can correctly interpret the digital representation of the original analogue alarm protocol. This guarantees that alarms from legacy devices aren't lost or misinterpreted during the conversion.

For digital equipment, the device must be processed and validated to ensure it connects correctly to the ARC.

Supporting your digital transition

The next section of the webinar moved onto how a digitally ready monitoring provider can support your transition, helping you minimise disruptions to your service and ensure the people using this remain safe.

To do this, your provider must be able to:

Manage a high volume of calls and data in real-time – covering the range of digital equipment you may have in the field, with carefully considered processes to deal with the data and use the information effectively.

Support multiple communication channels – integrating these with your systems to give your telecare users a choice of how to reach out, such as via phone calls, SMS, webchat and, in the future, video communications.
Handle both analogue and digital devices – so you can stagger your upgrades confidently, with dual signal monitoring capability and support for interim solutions, such as analogue to digital converters.

Find out more

The truth is everybody is impacted by the switchover. The digital status of your monitoring provider is just as important as your own upgrade strategy – and directly impacts the success of this.

Our aim here at Appello to provide all the facts, so you can make decisions with confidence. You can view the full recording from our webinar here: Ensuring your monitoring provider is digitally ready to meet your needs today and tomorrow.

We’ve also produced a useful guide on this topic, which explores the key technical requirements for a digitally ready monitoring provider in plain English:

What capabilities your provider needs to support your digital transition

The three essential elements of a digitally ready monitoring provider

Why it's up to you to confirm your monitoring provider is digitally ready (with six crucial questions to ask)

Our goal at Appello is to provide all the facts on the digital phone switchover and digital telecare. Talk to us to arrange your pain-free transition to digital telecare. We’ll audit your current system and provide our recommendations for cost-effective, future-proof digital telecare solutions that meet your needs.