Many telephone entry and intercom manufacturers have been in the business a long time — 80 years in one case — and for most of that time the technology hasn’t changed a lot: standalone units operating over plain old telephone service (POTS). But in recent years, the rise of IP and cellular technologies (along with the sunset of POTS) and the desire for more integrated approaches to security have changed things rapidly in this space.
“The technology itself has been around for a gazillion years,” says Richard Sedivy, director of marketing, DoorKing Inc., Inglewood, Calif. “Telephone entry systems in their simplest form are nothing but auto dialers. But today we are way beyond that in the functions that these things do and we are not having any trouble selling that. We put in very complex systems now.”