Traditionally Emergency voice communication systems have been hard wired from each refuge area back to a central master station. The problems with this approach are:

• Master station requires permanent attendance during the emergency evacuations. This means that one of your fire wardens has to stay by the panel during fire alarm activation, waiting for a possible call from a refuge area and they can not assist in the evacuation of people.
• The complete system is compromised if fire or smoke is in vicinity of the master station, as the fire warden operating the master station will have to leave the area.
• Many systems are not designed to be operated by physically disabled people and require an able bodied member of staff to remain in the refuge to operate the equipment.

Other issues with wired emergency voice communication systems include:

• Disruptive installation
• Expensive cabling (in cost and installation time)
• Only works from point to point
• Very expensive / not always possible to have multiple buildings wired back to a central location
• EMC problems with wiring in electrical risers
• Cable faults can be difficult to find and expensive to fix