BS8521 Newsflash! It is here at last!
8 May 2009
It would have been rewarding if we were able to announce the publication of BS8521, the new signalling protocol for Social Alarms at the AGM on 7th May, but from past experience it would have been tempting fate as it is something that the industry has been promising for some time.
But we can now announce that on Friday 8th May 2009, and long awaited, it was published and can now be purchased from British Standards Institute. With the facilitation of the TSA the major equipment suppliers have worked together to achieve this objective.
The major equipment suppliers have all committed in advance to implement the standard in both remote control and alarm receiving centre equipment following publication of the standard. Service providers should look out in the following months for supplier announcements but this event means that it should be possible for all service providers to procure equipment which has been designed to work with next generation networks such as BT 21CN before the scale implementation of the new network after the South Wales Pathfinder has been completed.
BS8521 offers for the first time the promise of improved interoperability of remote controllers supplied by different manufacturers, better identification and localisation of alarms and events and a solution which is resilient in the telecommunications network environment post 2010.