Central station monitoring is the most valuable part of your alarm
system for both you and the Alarm Company that has the pleasure of
providing you with this service. For the alarm user the peace of mind
that comes with knowing that help is on the way when needed is always
welcome and often insisted upon. For the alarm dealer, the recurring
revenue that comes from this side of the business is what sustains
them.
Monitoring firms come in all sizes. The largest are UL (Underwriters
Laboratory) listed facilities with Fort Knox like security. These
facilities have large backup generators as well as the ability to
instantly switch your signals to the closest available station in the
case of a natural or man made disaster. There is great stability in
doing business with these firms due to the fact that your account will
rarely be sold to another company, who would constantly raise your
monitoring rates. Small alarm dealers use monitoring agreements as a
way of infusing cash into their business as often as needed, To them
your account is like stock.
The largest National and International companies are at an advantage
because they have a great number of facilities, and are able to provide
local monitoring for their clients. Local monitoring is preferred
because you are less likely to loose a signal if it is coming over a
local phone line. An example of this is as follows. Lets say you live
in the central US and your alarm is being monitored on the east coast
over an 800 number telephone line. If a storm knocks out the phone
lines between you and the monitoring station, how would they receive
your signal for help?
The smallest firms could be a couple of people taking turns watching a
digital receiver in a home office. These are undesirable because you
may not be able to depend on them when needed. Your personal
information is also at risk, due to a potential lack of security in
this type of facility. All of the advantages of the large well- funded
central stations are reversed when your alarm dealer saves money by
doing business with these smallest of companies.
Monitoring stations large and small all have the same function. When
your alarm is violated it sends a digital signal to the monitoring
stations receiver. The receiver takes only a few seconds to decipher
where the signal is coming from and what type of response is required.
This information is than translated by computers and a dispatch screen
is shown to the first available dispatcher. The dispatcher connects to
the proper authority and relays your systems request for a response.
On most non- panic situations the monitoring station should call the
house before they dispatch to the proper authority. If you answer the
phone and give the correct password they should disregard your signal
as a user error. If you give the wrong password, the better monitoring
stations will say “Thank You" hang up and dispatch for a holdup/
hostage situation. This is yet another great people protector that is
built into your monitoring service.
If you are not home to answer the call a dispatch will be made and the
monitoring station will begin at the top of your call list in hopes of
contacting you or your agent with a warning of dispatch. This is not so
you will go check it is so you will not walk into a dangerous
situation. Looks like another one of those people protection features
when used properly doesn’t it? This process of dispatching and then
calling you or the people on your call list has come under the
microscope of late, and many municipalities are adjusting this process.
More about ECV (Enhanced Call Verification ) is posted on the "Experts
Know" web-site at the provided link.
Your local authority, based on how the signal is reported to them,
prioritizes dispatch responses. Your monitoring company should also
have dispatch protocol based on the signal type.
A request for a response to a hold up or distress will usually take precedence over a burglary signal.
A request for an ambulance should be dispatched immediately and a phone call to the house made afterwards.
A request for a fire dept. response should be dispatched immediately and a phone call to the house made afterwards.
A distress call made by the use of an ambush code or panic buttons
should trigger an immediate dispatch with no phone call to the premise.
An alarm signal dispatch that is trailing a burglar through a protected area such as:
Violation-
Zone 1 entry, front door.
Zone 5 main floor motion detector.
Zone 3 Upstairs hallway motion detector.
should excite your local authorities into a quicker response, as they
are sure it is most likely not a false alarm. This type of reporting
format is called “Extended Reporting" and while some cities require it
to help prioritize dispatch, most do not. It is always available to you
if your control is capable of reporting that way and you request it.
Now that you know about it you should ask for it by name.
The alternative dispatch that would just say “Burglary signal coming
from the Jones residence 123 any street" and would most likely become a
lower priority response.
A monitoring facility that monitors alarms for other local dealers as
well as their own installed systems needs a way to control the quality
of the systems it monitors, if it is going to have its dispatch
requests trusted by the authorities. Some large facilities will monitor
only the systems that are capable of sending the most sophisticated
signals. When a company such as this limits the amount of false alarms
it reports, it will earn a better response record.
If there are many signals coming into a monitoring station at the same
time, the signals can only be handled as fast as an operator can get to
them. The number of trained employees it has on duty will limit the
small to medium size companies. The largest firms have the ability of
employing many dispatchers at the same time. One such company that I
have worked with has over 700 on duty every day, every shift.
(TID-BIT!)
The National average for an alarm dispatch is 13 minutes. The largest firms can boast a 60- second or less average.
Monitoring your alarm is not only its greatest feature, but is also one
of the few services of which I can say with confidence “ You will most
likely get what you pay for." The smallest dealers will monitor your
alarm for sometimes half the monthly fee of the largest dealers. Now
that you know a few of the differences of this end of the business, I
would hope you make the proper decision based on your understanding how
important this service is to the protection of you, your loved ones,
and your other irreplaceable belongings as well.
I implore you not to cut corners on your choice of monitoring services!
(HOT TIP!)
Many municipalities require an alarm permit to be purchased by the
alarm user. If a dispatch is made without a permit on file you could
receive a hefty fine or worse yet a failure to respond. Some permit
holders are charged a one- time fee and others have to renew annually.
Check with your alarm company if there is a permit requirement in your
town. This way you can avoid being surprised by an unexpected expense.
Phone Hookup- Most alarm’s report over your existing
phone line. You don’t need another phone line for the alarm. People
that have DSL (Digital Subscriber Lines) can still use their line for
alarm reporting but a filter will need to be installed on your DSL
line. If you do not have a phone line you will have to have one
installed for alarm monitoring service, or consider one of the
alternative methods of transmitting your signals made available to you
by your alarm dealer.
Line Fault Monitor- Many of the high- end alarm
systems have a line fault monitor built in to them. The mid-range
systems have the ability to have one added and the low-end systems are
often too simple to even consider this device. The line fault monitor
is always on the lookout for an available phone line. If your line goes
down while your alarm is armed it will cause an alarm. This way if a
burglar cuts your phone line outside of the house or business they will
hopefully run, due to all the noise drawing attention to their
intentions. If your alarm is not armed, there will be no sirens but the
keypad will beep rapidly and let you know that your communication link
is down.
Many people think that if the phone line is cut and the line fault
monitor goes into alarm there will be a dispatch. This is false because
if there is no phone line to carry the signal it has no way of getting
to the monitoring station, unless you have an alternative communication
system as a backup. Instead this type of alarm will protect you if you
are at home by:
Letting the burglar know that they violated a system hopefully causing them to flee.
Giving you an opportunity to call 911 from your cell if one is available.
Allowing you to prepare to defend yourself and your loved ones.
Giving you time to see if all that dog food you have purchased over the
years is going to pay
off.
Line Seizure- Any quality alarm installer will take
the time to make sure that your phone line is set up for line seizure.
There is no additional equipment needed to accomplish this feature of
phone line protection. The phone line is run from your interface jack
outside of your house to one of the closest phone jacks inside. It is
then run from that jack to the next and this process is continued until
your electrician during construction or the Phone Company has wired all
of your phone jacks.
The alarm installer that is in a hurry or doesn’t know any better will
tap your alarm into the closest phone jack. The problem with this is
that if a burglar picks up any of the phones that are between the
outside interface jack and the jack your control is tapped into it will
stop the transmission of your alarm signal.
The knowledgeable and concerned installer will run your control phone
line directly to the outside phone interface assuring that it is first
on line. They will then run from the control to your first phone jack
making it second on line. When an alarm is violated it will seize the
phone line completely for its own use and return service to the house
after the signals have been sent to the receiver in the monitoring
station.
Long Range Radio- This is a radio transmitter that
is used by many large monitoring firms to monitor your alarm instead of
over a phone line. The Transmitter sends a radio signal to a repeater
much like your cell phone does, and the repeater sends your signal to
the monitoring stations receivers in a local station. Many customers
that need an increased level of security use the radio transmitted
signal and the phone line transmission simultaneously.
This level of protection obviously costs more than the average
homeowner would care to pay. Even as a stand alone system the radio
signal is less likely to be interrupted than a phone line that is
exposed outside your home or business.
Cellular Communicators- This is a communicator that
is wired to your alarm control and processes the signals over the
cellular communication towers. Most applications I have seen for this
device have utilized it as a backup to a phone connection. However I
have seen it used as a sole means of communication for the alarm system
in a few cases where long range radio and a phone lines were not
available. You would have to purchase the usually expensive cellular
communicator separately, because it is not built into your alarm
control.
Alarm owners that use Long- range radio and cellular communicators as a
backup reporting device usually have to pay an additional monitoring
fee. As an added measure of security, the alarm companies will often
send these backup signals to a separate monitoring central station.
This assures two complete dispatch processes from different operators
at different locations, thus increasing the level of
security.
Opening and Closing Reports- Most of the average to
high-end systems have the ability to report enough data to create
opening and closing reports if desired. Opening and closing reports are
named as such, because they are mostly used in commercial applications
to log the times and users that are opening and closing the business.
There are different levels of opening and closing reports. Some of the most common are listed below as examples:
(Supervised) This type of report lets assigned code
users open and close at will, if within the specified window of normal
activity. It will log the event into a report that can be forwarded to
a report manager at a pre- determined frequency or upon request. If a
code user opens or closes outside of a pre-assigned schedule of
normalcy it will trigger a supervisory phone call to a manager.
(unsupervised) This type of report lets assigned
code users enter and exit at will. It will log these events and can be
checked by a supervisor upon request.
I have seen supervised opening and closing reports used in a
residential situation on a few occasions. You can for example contact
an elderly relative’s refrigerator door and have a phone call made to
you if it does not open within a predetermined amount of time. Or you
can set it to have you notified if the kids come home early from
school. You can imagine how many creative ideas you can come up with if
you want to.
(INSIDE SCOOP!)
The Alpha Keypads and controls of many high-end systems allow you to
scroll through and read the last 100+ events. By having one of these
systems you can create your own opening and closing controls and
reports without having to bear the monthly expense of this service. The
small amount of dollars spent on this upgrade will pay for itself in a
hurry.
Paging- Many of the alarm systems have an onboard
paging device so you can receive the time and code user of each event
such as arming and disarming when opening and closing reports are
programmed to the on position in your alarm control. You will also
receive a code for alarm violations and the zone or zone numbers that
are violated during an alarm breach. You would have to have a digital
pager for this to work and once again your teenagers are going to hate
how much you now know about alarms!
Other articles you should read when considering who will monitor your Alarm System are:
Alarm Systems and VoIP
Alarm System ECV Will Effect All Alarm Users in 2006
These articles are posted on The Experts Know! Alarms web-site
Matthew is a 22 year veteran of the alarm industry. He has served as an
installer, salesman, licensed alarm company owner, monitoring station
designer, promotions and marketing director with one of the worlds
largest security dealers. He now works as a consumer advocate, teaching
consumers how to buy or get systems for free (without being
taken). He also consults alarm dealerships on how to market to
the educated consumers that today’s alarm dealer is finding. He is
committed to being unbiased.
His web site is www.expertsknow.com
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Article added to SearchWarp.com on Tuesday, March 14, 2006 View other articles written by Matthew Lombardi(1,909)
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