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NGN Equip. Test Results

The table below provides information relating to the safe operation of Tunstall's social alarm equipment on the 21CN network following performance tests at BT's test laboratories together with Tunstall's comprehensive quality tests.

As switching to a NGN is now extremely easy, Tunstall believes that the most responsible action is to upgrade equipment that has demonstrated issues when tested on 21CN as soon as possible. This will ensure that all equipment and more importantly all customers are fully protected even if they switch to a NGN without the knowledge of their monitoring provider.

In addition, Tunstall advises that where a NGN is being used by a telecare service user its STMF protocol should be utilised. Please click here to view the announcement on the STMF protocol.

Note: Products categorised as ‘operational fail' or ‘reliability fail' would not pass Tunstall's stringent pre-sales product testing. It is therefore recommended that this equipment is upgraded.

The following products are categorised as ‘test criteria fail' as they are unable to be tested for 21CN compliance due to the age of the equipment (25-30 years) and the availability of reliable test equipment. For further advice on this equipment please e-mail 21cn@tunstall.co.uk.

 Footnotes

*Piper Premier, Lifeline II, 2000, 3000 - Operational Fail

Reason: The above home units are categorised as ‘operational fail' because during testing issues relating to the audio quality of the call (high level of sidetone in the handset) were detected.

Impact: This would cause the user to hear their own voice through the earpiece in the handset when there is no battery or mains power. Users with hearing aids would be impacted most by this issue.

**PM 2000/Wolsley/Piper Group/Piper Haven UAC - Reliability Fail

Reason: Categorised as a ‘reliability fail' as equipment failed intermittently to open a speech channel to the monitoring centre during an alarm call.

Impact: This means that although the equipment is capable of raising a call to the monitoring centre, the operator may not be able to select the call and therefore would not be able to speak to the resident to ascertain the nature of the alarm. This could mean that alarm calls are not dealt with first time and may require the equipment to redial the monitoring centre causing a potentially critical delay to the required response.

***BS7369 Protocol - Protocol Fail

Equipment using this protocol is not advised to be used on 21CN, since the protocol has fundamental problems in relation to end-to-end timing delays in fact it fails at 70ms compared to the maximum 300ms delay. This standard and all variants of it have been declared obsolescent by BSI.

For further information or clarification on 21CN/NGNs please email 21cn@tunstall.co.uk