Recently completed a new home construction which during the build called a local company to install a security system. They completed roughly 90% of the work and said they would return to set the system up to call my local dispatch center. Well, days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and almost a year later and repeated phone calls to everyone from the installer (recently found out business went under), DSC out of Canada, and any and everybody half way knowledgeable of security systems and still nothing. The system or at least the only literature I have from it is PC1616/PC1832/PC1864 v4.2 User Manual for a DSC Power Series Security System. It tells me nothing or at least nothing I can understand. The system works fine, BUT I do not know how to program the unit as to call the authorities. Can anyone help?

There is no calling the authorities unless you have a digital voice for calling 911. The calls are usually handled by a control center and that is who the alarm would normally call. They are a subsciption service. Some alarms are set up with listening devices also and they can check on you in an emergency and listen in should the alarm go off. It's a way of protecting false alarms to the police.

Before building this home our last home had a system that called a dispatch center, that number however had to be keyed in by myself. Once the alarm was activated such as for a test I would call the "911 dispatch" and tell them of the test. In the event the alarm was triggered they would call me to see the problem, after 3 false alarms the local dispatch or sheriffs department charged $25.00. With this system I see no way of entering a telephone number.

Based on what Im seeing you need a separate piece of equiptment to dial out. Do you have that in your system?

DSC - User Manuals (http://www.dsc.com/index.php?n=library&o=view_documents&id=1)

A Pager will work, but few have pagers anymore.
A United Security Products AVD 2000 or so could work, verify this is the dialer with line seizure.
You can also program the Communication receiver to your cell, but you won't be able to intrepret the tones.
Or You can use this:
DSC PowerSeries Integration Module IT-120 - IT-120 (http://www.dsc.com/index.php?n=products&o=view&id=23)

The DSC controls have built in dialers. There are sections in programming (301, 302 & 303) to enter central Station receiver numbers. You will need to contact an alarm company to get you set up for monitoring. DSC does not have the capability within it's platform to do pagers or text messages. If that is a feature you wish to have there has to be a 3rd party brought in which will allow remote arming and disarming as well.

Actually I have programmed a pager number into section 301 of the programming and it works perfectly. You just have to remember to also set section 350 to "05" which is for pagers as it is default set to "04" SIA format.