ADT Security Services Inc., a unit of Tyco Fire & Security, Boca Raton, Fla., introduced Unattended Delivery, a video-based service that provides a secure way for retailers to deliver goods after hours, reducing store delivery costs. Using an integrated access control and video monitoring system, ADT remotely monitors the delivery of goods, enabling retailers to schedule merchandise shipments during off hours and without the need for an employee to be present.

Rex Gillette, vice president of ADT Retail, said night deliveries can produce significant cost savings for retailers by allowing more deliveries with fewer drivers, freeing up employees to focus more on customer service and less on supervising deliveries and increasing sales as new merchandise can be stocked earlier.

ADT’s Unattended Delivery service consists of a mix of technologies including access control, video surveillance, remote monitoring, intrusion detection and two-way voice to monitor after-hour deliveries.

With the service, delivery drivers are issued access control badges, which grant limited access to a retail establishment after hours. The access control system triggers a deliver notification to ADT’s national account monitoring center, where an operator remotely monitors and records activities via video surveillance cameras installed in the store. Two-way voice capabilities allow the monitoring team to communicate with the delivery driver, if needed.

In other company news, ADT has joined forces with cable and telecommunications providers to help ensure its security systems will continue to be able to communicate with its monitoring centers if a customer switches to an IP-based telephone service. ADT outlined a set of characteristics that this next generation of phone services providers must meet in order to be a primary method of transmitting alarm signals to ADT’s 24-hour a day monitoring centers.

IP-based telephone providers Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, Charter, Cox Communications and Bright House Networks have confirmed that their networks meet the characteristics required by ADT to be a primary method of alarm transmission.

ADT’s chief operating officer John Koch said over the past several months, ADT has brought together numerous parties from both the cable and telecommunications industries to better understand the differences among IP-based phone providers in how they set up and maintain their networks. The result is a set of phone network characteristics that ADT has taken into consideration in determining how to best serve the interests of its customers. For more information on ADT, visit www.adt.com.