Minutes
Midlands TSA Connect – National Telecoms Providers – Mobile Issues 2nd June 2016
Host: Solihull Community Housing – Safe & Sound Service
Location: Solihull Better Living Centre, Unit 4, Elmdon Trading Estate, Bickenhill Lane, B37 7HE
Attendees
· Lisa Rogers, Telecare Development Officer, Safe & Sound
· Carol Moss, Team Leader, Dudley Telecare,
· Oliver Cox, Sales & Combined Services Manager,Mobius Networks
· Gary Thomas-McGenity, Borough Care, North Warwickshire BC
· Phil Hollett, CEO, CSL DualCom
· Gillian Austin Business Relationship Manager TSA
Apologies:
· Russell Oakes, Careline Supervisor, Birmingham City Council
Introductions
The meeting began with a round the table introduction and warm welcome to all participants in the group. Each member of the group gave a little background about their service and interest in being involved with the working group.
Background
Gillian gave an overview from the Midlands Connect held 16th March where concerns were expressed about the difficulties with national telecoms providers in relation to:
o Communication difficulties – who to speak to, what to expect
o Tackling line faults
o Understanding “life critical” provision
Some of these difficulties also relate to mobile service providers in relation to connectivity and have been recognised within the work of the Mobile Technology Services working group.
Opening Discussions
There was a general discussion about the difficulties faced by service providers when trying to communicate with national telecoms providers when a service user’s phone line goes down, preventing a response being raised through the phone line in the event of an emergency situation arising. National telecom providers are numerous, however it was felt BT was a good starting point.
Understanding the Issues
National telecoms providers core business is with voice calls, with little or no recognition of the services that communicate using DTMF or STMF codes through the PTSN lines. There is also little understanding or willingness to accommodate, of the impact on service users of telecare equipment when there is a fault on the line rendering it in effective.
Fault handling through telecoms providers is dealt with in a general purpose call handling centre, designed to deal with core business of voice calls where there is no urgency if a phone line is out of service for a period of time. Operators have no knowledge of TECS or the life critical nature of the service, and therefore no way of dealing with the calls. A further challenge is presented when the direct customer of the telecoms provider has to report the fault, with the TECS provider being unable to support or intervene to deal with the issue.
The group recognised this becomes quite technical, with Phil and Oliver offering explanations around how equipment communicates through a phone line, what is required and the need to ensure there is a wider awareness throughout the TECS industry from Commissioning of services, through to front line providers to ensure the right equipment is available and provided to deliver an effective service for the customer.
The group also identified the concern that as service providers they are not always aware if there is a problem with the phone line. Some of the equipment will alert the service user if there is a problem, but this is not picked up by the monitoring centre. If a service user is unable to pass this information on, or understand the consequences, this puts them at risk.
Phil put together some notes as follows that sum up the discussion within the group:
“One of the areas which needs to be addressed is how we get BT (open reach) to respond quicker in the event of a line fault on a BT PSTN line. There are things we can do
1. We need to be able to diagnose a fault quickly and correctly
2. We need to pass this information to an area that can interface with BT
In order for a line fault to be detected we do not want to have to wait until the person finds they cannot use the line. The way other industries do this is by some form of integrity call or even a daily test call. Normally if the test call is not received the alarm management software will send an alert to an operator who can call the line to check for connectivity. This means you can diagnose a fault within 24 hours.
This will create some logistics issues as all units calling in could tie up lines and does the alarm management software have the ability to send alerts. The way we do it in the security industry is we take all of the calls and then only let the ARC know if we haven’t received a call. This means they only have to deal with the potential issues not all of the calls.
In the first instance we need to understand if the current Telecare units in the field have the ability to send polling/test calls and can they send them to a different number. I can take this up with the manufacturers as we see them on a regular basis and look to get some feedback
Once you have diagnosed the fault it than has to be put into a format the BT understands. I would suggest this is some type of centralised function or is a trained function in each ARC.
We are now ready to engage with BT”
Actions:
Phil Hollett has offered to take the lead on the working group with support from the rest of the group to achieve outcomes.
· Feedback at next Connects - GA
· Communications Procedure – Draft process for passing information through to BT for action - WG
· Diagnosing faults – Establish if existing field equipment is capable of polling and sending information through on a different “free” number - PH. Oliver does this apply for mobile technologies and communications?
· Liaise with Technology Steering Group – Are we engaged with BT at a technical level, similar issues within security alarm industry. Once we understand that there is going to be a problem we can talk to them about what we need to put in place to ensure they do not put people in harm’s way by making their connection unavailable. I would hope that they would want to be very supportive and will want to put something in place that will quickly resolve any issues. If so we can use this process to assist the problems we are getting today as they are occurring for the same reason. Alternatively they may decide that they do not want to offer any assistance and we will have to go a different route – GA
· Agree objectives for group, proposed:
o Establish communications between TECS Industry and National Telecoms providers – BT initially
o Develop “what good looks like” for fault alerting
o Understand what is needed for future of TECS services communications in the digital world
DoNM
To be agreed following next Connects
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