Home Security Monitoring and Two Way Voice

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!