Telephone wires draw the boundary between the known and the unknown. Even a working fire or burglar alarm is useless without the means to transmit the signal to a monitoring company.
For homes and businesses built within the grid where telephone wires are already established, this is no problem. But what about new customers beyond the existing reach of phone lines that need alarm systems? As residential and commercial growth pushes further outward, more customers are in need of protection from companies that can provide monitoring services outside of a pre-existing telephone network.