Or alternatively, will my alarm system stop working if my Wifi goes down?

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When I was with a customer the other day, they asked me if our alarm systems used WiFi to communicate. Now I think what they were actually asking me was, will their system still work if the WiFi goes down? There’s a few different facets to that.  So I’m going to break it down into a couple of different pieces.

So first of all, the alarm systems that we install,the sensors and the control panel and the siren don’t communicate with each other using wifi. Now there may be some systems that use wifi. We don’t use any of those. Wifi uses a couple of different frequencies, 2.4 gigahertz and five gigahertz. The alarm systems that we install all operate on 868 megahertz, so they’re completely different frequency range and there’s no way that one device or one system can interfere with WiFi and there’s no way that the WiFi can interfere with the alarm system.

Now the second part of that is how the alarm system communicates out with the outside world.

Now with all of our systems, they use the broadband connection from your house to the internet to communicate out with the smartphone app.  And then the question is, does the alarm system use WiFi to communicate with the router to then get the signal out.

With some of our systems, they’re hardwired into the main router. With others of our systems, yes, they use WiFi to communicate with the router. And then, obviously, with the Qolsys system, yes, it uses WiFi, but it also uses the 4G mobile phone network as well. So, in those instances, if the WiFi router goes down, or indeed the broadband signal from the exchange fails, then  you will not get communication from the alarm system.

But in all of those instances, the alarm system will continue to function as an alarm system. So if someone breaks in, the siren will still go off. The internal sounder in the control panel will still go off. It will still function as an alarm system. You just won’t get the notification to your phone and with the Qolsys system.  It’s unlikely that that will happen. If the broadband goes down, then it will use the 4G router built in, and if the 4G signal goes down, then it will continue to use the WiFi broadband router.  So it’s only in the unlikely event of both pathways going down that it will stop communicating.

So hopefully that answers that question.