Entries Tagged 'Home Security' ↓

Home Security Monitoring

Of all the home security features that are available with home alarms the system’s capacity to dispatch the police is often the most overlooked. Traditional alarm systems are designed to simply send a signal to a dispatch station which, in turn, contacts the local police department for dispatching an officer. As with all alarms, of course, the dispatch station will contact someone in the home in order to verify the authenticity of the emergency. Without over-the-phone confirmation of the emergency, however, the police can only be dispatched on an unconfirmed break-in which doesn’t carry nearly as high a priority. The significance, then, is that during a real home emergency how could anyone expect an intruder to answer the phone and verify the break-in?! This has resulted in many poorly dispatched break-ins because many service providers (even though the actual alarm system hardware may be the newest the industry has to offer) simply don’t provide the best monitoring services available.

Two-way voice intercom service has quickly become the superior monitoring service available and certainly has eliminated the limitations that occur with the previous. The feature is very simple: instead of the dispatch station calling you at your home phone number during a break-in they can actually immediately communicate with the homeowner, or verify that there’s an intruder, via an intercom (that works through your phone line) that is built directly into your alarm system. Once activated, the intercom feature’s highly sensitive microphone can easily detect up to 2-3 times more than the human ear is capable of hearing thereby giving the dispatch station the advantage of hearing any movement or communication throughout the entire home. The intercom’s speaker enables a live operator to speak to anyone in the house as well. Obviously, this feature is meant to allow the operator to determine who is in the home or what the intruder is doing. Additionally, this feature provides something of false alarm prevention in that the homeowner, if they’ve accidentally activated the alarm themselves, can simply provide the operator a password which identifies them as the homeowner and the police won’t be sent.

Overall, this service provides a greater level of security by providing the means whereby the police can be more quickly dispatched as well as more efficiently. No longer is it necessary for monitoring companies to guess whether the alarm signal they’re receiving is legitimate or accidentally. Instead, they can just listen!

Due to the ever-changing technology of the telecommunications industry, the Alarm Industry has also had to make it’s own changes to keep up. There was a time that no phone line meant no protection. Most monitored alarm systems require that a home be equipped with a traditional, analog landline telephone service to allow the security system to communicate (in the case of a break-in) with an emergency dispatch station (for police notification). However, as the ubiquitous use of cell phones continues to increase, as well as the increasing popularity of Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) phone services offered by internet companies, traditional landline phone services are becoming more scarce and, consequently, pose a problem for alarm systems that have always relied on phone-line communication to notify the police of a break-in. The past few years, however, have given the Alarm Industry some new solutions to this challenge—the most successful being the use of cellular units for communicating between the home and the emergency dispatch station in the even of an intrusion.

Similar to a cell phone, this device works in conjunction with the rest of the security equipment and, rather than transmitting information via phone lines, will transmit emergency information to a dispatch station through wireless signals. This means that no phone line is necessary. Unfortunately, many alarm companies still follow the practice of only using equipment that will perform in combination with a landline phone because the use of cellular communication units (cell units, as they’re more commonly called) can be costly and the subsequent need to pass that cost to the consumer results in fewer people willing to make the purchase. However, Alarm.com, one of the primary companies that has led the industry in cellular communication, is one of the few companies that has proven itself successful in finding a way to provide cellular alarm services for those without traditional landlines.

Unlike many other cellular service providers, Alarm.com’s specialized focus has allowed them to develop cellular security equipment (partnered with General Electric) that is small enough to be unobtrusive (and in some instances completely hidden in accessory hardware equipment) and at a price close enough to traditional monitoring costs to be effectively indistinguishable. In fact, with this type of affordable equipment, homeowners now have the option of choosing to add, as an additional protection, a cellular unit to their system to backup a traditional phone line in the event of any failure. More importantly, with these new advances, home security is now technologically, and financially, accessible to homeowners without traditional phone lines.