Using a Qolsys IQ Panel 2 with a Phone Line

hi diy-ers this is michael from alarm grid and today i'm going to be answering the question of whether or not you can use a phone line with a qolsys iq panel 2 plus security system uh the answer is no you cannot use a phone line with the qolsys iq panel 2 or iq panel 2 plus for one it doesn't have a phone jack so you won't be able to insert an rj31x phone line or any phone line for that matter you can't plug in an ethernet cable or anything like that uh traditionally alarm systems relied on phone lines uh before the rise of the internet uh before cellular technology became prominent uh back in the old days um which i don't really remember i'm too young but uh alarm systems uh relied on phone system phone lines um they would be set up with the phone line and they would have to dial out uh kind of like an old dial up connection that you might remember using remember um the internet back in the old day um you're getting online with the dial up um the panels did something similar they sent uh signals across phone lines and that's that's how alarm systems worked um but there are problems with phone lines phone phone line communication if you remember dial up it's very slow and uh we want alarm monitoring to be fast you need help quickly someone's breaking in then you got to send out a signal and receive a response quickly and phone lines aren't good for that uh there's also the matter of an intruder a smart intruder could just go up to the phone line and just take some scissors and cut it cut it and then you're not sending out any phone line signals um oddly enough you'll still find phone lines on some hard hardwired panels and actually even as recently as last year interlogix before they went out of business their panels still had phone lines you could set up a phone line so um and some people do still use them they they are usable but we really don't recommend them we recommend cellular communication which the qolsys iq panel 2 plus offers it has a built-in lte cellular communicator uh cellular communication is great because it's it's super reliable it almost never goes down as long as you have a strong enough cell signal um the qolsys iq panel 2 can also do internet connectivity through wi-fi connects to a local wi-fi network um for alarm.com you have to have it on cellular you have to register the cellular communicator so you're going to need to pay for cellular monitoring and activate the cellular communicator internet is technically optional but most users they end up using it anyway just because well you usually have wi-fi in your house and you can just you know connect it to the internet and it's always good to have a second path available um if you are in an area where there is not good cellular coverage you just can't get good cell coverage you have a few options one option is to get a cellular antenna or a cellular amplifier to try to boost the cell signals that's what you can do with the iq2 if you're having trouble getting a good reception there are a t lte and verizon lte options so if one works better in your area get that version of the iq2 you could also consider getting a panel that can do ip only internet only um such as a honeywell panel uh like i said alarm.com requires that you have um cellular setup on your system you have to have a cellular communicator but if you get a honeywell panel then you could do an ip only option and some users do that to save money because um ip monitoring is a little bit less expensive usually than cellular monitoring this can vary depending upon the monitoring company you're working with but with alarm grid we can definitely say that our um our cellular plans are a bit more expensive but the benefit is that cellular is more reliable as you may know the internet goes down sometimes if your router doesn't have a backup battery or another way to stay powered on like a power generator or something then it will go offline when you lose electricity so that won't happen with cellular the panel has a backup battery and it can still perform cellular communication when the power's out um so we have our iq2 here i just want to show you where you would find the imei number to activate the cellular communicator just to show you something on the panel here again you can't do phone line on this but you you will be activating cellular if you're activating your iq2 for monitoring so we're at the main screen of the iq2 uh we're going to click the small gray bar at the top and we're going to choose settings and we're going to choose advanced settings and then we're going to enter in our installer code which ours is at the default of one one one one we're gonna choose about and then we're gonna go to cellular and you can see down here we have our imei number we can see a signal strength some other information the imei you will need to provide when activating uh so we recommend just writing that down maybe taking a picture and storing it somewhere place um so that's uh what you can do with the imei you can provide that to your monitoring company and you activate your system uh so that answers the question of whether or not you can use uh phone line with the qolsys iq panel two plus you cannot use phone line if you found this video helpful make sure to give it a thumbs up below to like the video and remember to subscribe to our channel for updates on future videos and if you want to learn more about the iq2 you have any questions about monitoring send an email to support alarmgrid.com we hope you enjoyed the video thank you