What about burglar alarm systems and shared-line DSL?

Some burglar alarm systems (but not any systems in the Ruby Ranch neighborhood) are set up to pass burglar alarm data to monitoring equipment in the telephone company central office, using a shared line much as with shared-line DSL. With such a burglar alarm system it is not possible to share a single telephone line three ways -- voice, alarm, and DSL. For a particular voice line it can have the alarm data shared onto the line or DSL data, but not both. A homeowner with such a burglar alarm system who also wants DSL must have a second line installed -- a second voice line onto which the DSL data can be shared, or a dedicated DSL line.

It is important to appreciate that no home in the Ruby Ranch neighborhood has this type of burglar alarm system. For this type of system to work, there needs to be an uninterrupted copper connection from the home to the telephone company central office. But from Ruby Ranch the telephone lines are converted to optical fiber at a location near Highway 9. This means an alarm company installing an alarm in a Ruby Ranch home can't use this type of alarm data communication. (It is the same reason why nobody provides DSL from the central office to our neighborhood, and it is the same reason why dialup internet modem connections in our neighborhood are never faster than about 26K bits per second.) Instead, any alarm system used in the Ruby Ranch neighborhood must simply dial a telephone call to report trouble. In doing so it only uses the "voice" part of the telephone line and this leaves the high-frequency "data" portion of the line available for DSL use if desired.

This means that if you have only one telephone line in your house and if you have an alarm system, you need not worry that adding DSL to the line will interfere with the functioning of the alarm system. Of course after line-shared DSL is installed, itis important to test your alarm to make sure that it is still working as intended.