Abstract: The present invention provides an independent supervised communications network which interfaces with an existing cellular telecommunications network by utilizing locally unused cellular frequencies to report information from a premise to a central monitoring facility. This invention utilizes an input device associated with the premise for providing one or more status messages to a transceiver module. The transceiver module may be a modified cellular telephone which is operable in one of three modes; supervision, event and wait. The cellular phone modifications are primarily software changes which provide a logic routine for scanning and selecting an available forward control channel based on a comparison of preselected criteria with measured characteristics and determining a reverse control channel corresponding to the selected forward control channel.