When thieves stripped almost a mile of copper cable from a village in Rutland, hundreds of homes and businesses lost phone and broadband services. As BBC News reports, police have now launched a dedicated operation targeting organised cable theft across several counties. For alarm installers, the incidents highlight a simple vulnerability: what happens to alarm signalling when the communications infrastructure it depends on disappears?
When infrastructure disappears, what happens to the alarm signal?
The incidents in and around North Luffenham, Rutland tell a pattern that’s worth understanding in full. According to BBC News, offenders returned repeatedly to areas they had already targeted, suggesting organised, systematic activity rather than opportunistic theft. Leicestershire Police’s Operation Hierophant, which brings together specialist intelligence teams and Openreach, was launched specifically because these thefts “can have a significant impact on local communities, businesses and vulnerable residents by disrupting broadband and communication services,” in the words of Insp Rowan Paterson-Bell.
For premises where alarm signalling depends on the affected connection, a cable theft can interrupt the path to the ARC. Without an independent alternative path, that can leave the site without its normal signalling route.
The vulnerability copper infrastructure creates for alarm signalling
Traditional alarm signalling has long depended on the copper telephone network. The problem is that copper cable is physically accessible, relatively easy to remove, and consistently valuable on the scrap metal market, which makes it an attractive target for organised criminal networks.
The Rutland incidents are a useful illustration of how quickly this can happen and how wide the impact can be. One theft removed nearly a mile of cable. The effect was felt across hundreds of properties. If even a fraction of those had alarm systems relying solely on that copper path, their signalling would have been compromised without any action taken by the criminal at those specific premises.
Why this reinforces the case for moving away from PSTN now
The PSTN switch-off, scheduled for January 2027, is often discussed in terms of regulatory deadlines and technology migration planning. But incidents like these in Rutland reframe the issue in more immediate terms. The copper network is already under physical threat from theft. It’s also ageing infrastructure that BT Openreach is actively decommissioning. Relying on it for alarm signalling in the meantime carries risk that tends to be underestimated until something goes wrong.
AddSecure’s guide to the PSTN and ISDN switch-off outlines five key steps for security professionals to get ready, including legal considerations and the impact on alarm systems, it’s worth reviewing if you haven’t already.
For installers, the practical question is straightforward: what happens to your customers’ alarm signals if the copper path goes down tonight? If the honest answer is “we don’t know” or “they’d probably lose connectivity,” that’s worth addressing before the next cable theft makes it a real incident.
What resilient alarm signalling looks like in practice
Resilient alarm signalling doesn’t rely on a single path. Modern solutions use IP and cellular transmission, meaning that if one route is disrupted, whether by cable theft, line fault, or planned infrastructure change, the signal can route via an alternative path to the ARC.
Solutions such as AddSecure NGP Advanced extra are designed around this principle, combining a dedicated broadband connection with mobile backup to reduce reliance on a single communications path.
This kind of dual-path or cellular-primary approach:
- Provides an alternative signalling path if the primary connection becomes unavailable
- Creates a clear migration path ahead of the 2027 PSTN switch-off
- Gives installers and ARCs documented resilience they can stand behind
As AddSecure’s alarm signalling resources make clear, the infrastructure change is already underway. The copper network’s vulnerability to theft adds a further practical argument for migrating customers sooner rather than waiting for a deadline.
The installer’s position in all of this
Alarm installers are often the first point of contact when something goes wrong with a customer’s alarm connectivity. When the cause is a copper cable theft two streets away, that’s a difficult conversation, particularly if the customer assumed their alarm was working throughout.
The answer isn’t simply replacing one communications technology with another. It’s designing the signalling path so that the failure of one connection doesn’t leave the site without a route to the ARC.
For installers, incidents like the Rutland cable thefts make that conversation much easier to have. Resilience is no longer an abstract technical benefit. It’s a response to a failure that customers can see happening in the real world.
Want to make sure your customers’ alarm signalling doesn’t depend on a single communications path? Explore AddSecure’s alarm signalling solutions and talk to our team about building greater resilience into existing and new installations.