Alarm systems communicate with the central station in two ways, either through a phone line or a cellular connection.
The message of FC or Comm Failure stands for communication failure. It means that your alarm system’s control panel attempted to dial out to the central station and failed.
An FC or Comm Failure message displayed on your keypad means there is a problem with communication through the phone line.
One reason for a comm failure message is a temporary power outage.
During a power outage, your cable or telephone modem may lose power if it does not have a battery backup.
Without power, your phone service will be interrupted.
Your alarm system may have tried to transmit a daily or weekly test signal overnight and failed.
To clear the comm failure message, you need to let your alarm system transmit another signal to the central station.
Once the central station receives the signal, it sends a confirmation signal back to your alarm panel, and the error message will clear.
Clearing the FC or Comm Failure Message on your keypad
There are a couple of things that can clear the error message.
1- Enter your user code and press off. This might clear the message. You may have to repeat this two times.
If the error message does not clear, go to step two.
2- If your alarm company enabled the test function during the initial installation, you might be able to send a test signal from the keypad.
Perform a system test by entering your four-digit user code and pressing the number five button, which is the test button.
Performing a test sends a “test” signal to the central station and will clear the error code if the signal goes through.
Allow 2-3 minutes for the alarm system to dial out to the central station.
If the comm failure message doesn’t clear after a few minutes
1- Contact your alarm company and tell them you have a comm failure message on your keypad.
2- Have the alarm company place your account on test mode so that the police don’t get dispatched.
3- Arm your security system in the away or stay mode.
4- Wait 60 seconds for the exit delay to expire, and the keypad displays “system armed.”
5- Open a door or a window and wait for the siren to ring off.
6- After the siren rings, turn off the alarm system as you usually do by entering your user code and off.
7- Disarm the security system a second time to clear the alarm message displayed on the keypad.
8- Wait for 2-3 minutes to allow the alarm system to send a signal to the central station.
9- The comm failure message should now be cleared.
If the comm failure message still doesn’t clear, you might have a dialer delay programmed into your system, requiring the siren to ring for at least 30 seconds before the alarm system sends a signal.
Arm the system again and repeat steps 3-6 but this time, wait 30-40 seconds before you turn off the alarm system.
If the comm failure doesn’t clear, you’ve done pretty much everything you can, and it’s time to call your alarm company for service.
Communication failure can occur for several other reasons
1- The most current reason is that all alarm panels now have to dial the area code to make a local call.
The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) recently designated 988 as the new number to reach the national suicide prevention hotline.
Because of this, all calls, including local phone calls, require the area code to be dialed before the number.
When your alarm system dials out to your alarm company, it dials a phone number programmed into the alarm system’s control panel.
Without the area code, the call to the monitoring center will fail. The alarm system will attempt to dial several times and will display a comm fail message if the call fails to go through.
You will need to contact your alarm company and have them come to your house to reprogram the phone number to fix this problem.
2- There is no phone connection to the alarm panel.
- The wire from your cable modem or telephone service has been cut.
- You may have disconnected a second phone line that was no longer used.
Solution- call your alarm company to rewire the telephone line or install a cellular communicator.
3- You might have recently changed phone service providers, and the phone line connection to the alarm panel is now reversed or disconnected
Solution- call your alarm company to rewire the telephone line or install a cellular communicator.
4- you might have moved your cable modem from one room to another and disconnected the phone line.
Solution- move your cable modem back to where it was and plug in the phone line to the back of the modem.
Call your alarm company to rewire the phone line or install a cellular communicator.
Most new alarm systems installed today do not rely on a telephone connection.
Instead, we use cellular communicators to transmit the signal to the central station. This has several benefits:
1- You don’t have to worry about somebody cutting your phone line. Burglars often cut the phone line from outside your house before they break-in.
Cutting the phone line disables the communication path to the central monitoring center.
2- Since most of us use our cell phones to make calls at home, there is no longer a need for most people to pay for a home telephone line.
You can access an app to control your security system and get notifications using a cellular connection.
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