Cincinnati Bell Inc. announced the signing of a definitive agreement to sell its Complete Protection security monitoring business to Guardian Alarm Company, Southfield, Mich. Cincinnati Bell will continue to offer Complete Protection services through a marketing agreement with Guardian.
A federal court decided last week that a fire protection district in Illinois had no legal authority to establish its own non-competitive monitoring station and take over more than 300 acc
Diebold Inc. earned the coveted Central Station of the Year Award in CSAA’s Excellence Awards competition, it was announced yesterday during the awards presentation held at ESX in Charlotte, N.C. Diebold operates monitoring centers located in Uniontown, Ohio and Honolulu, Hawaii.
A newly formed subcommittee of the Alarm Industry Communications Committee (AICC) is already hard at work to develop a nationally recognized monitoring license.
Pinnacle Security, Orem, Utah, announced the completion of a project in partnership with Habitat for Humanity in Pinnacle’s home-base city of Orem Utah.
The broadcaster of 30 Rock and Days of Our Lives is now offering home security. Just since last October, Xfinity from Comcast, which also owns NBC Universal, rolled out home security and monitoring; ADT, the world’s biggest home security firm, introduced a multi-level lifestyle monitoring and control service; Verizon, one of the largest U.S. communications companies, with a recent iPhone deal and a cloud computing acquisition in hand, has its own home monitoring experiment in motion; APX Alarm Security Solutions Inc., Provo, Utah, the fifth-largest alarm monitoring company on the SDM 100, rebranded as Vivint™ and launched new products turning its focus from alarm monitoring to a focus on whole home automation and monitoring (see page 149 for more on APX’s rebrand as Vivint™). And that’s not an all-inclusive list.
Micro Key Solutions, Kissimmee, Fla., a provider of software solutions for the security alarm industry, in cooperation with the Central Station Alarm Association (CSAA), a trade association that represents companies offering security (alarm) monitoring systems through a central station, is offering to pay the first year’s CSAA membership dues for any CSAA-approved, nationally recognized testing laboratory (NRTL) central station using Micro Key Solutions’ Millennium Series™ monitoring software. This offer, which began Jan. 1, 2011, is open to non-CSAA members, and will be in effect for proprietary and commercial central stations throughout the United States and Canada throughout the rest of 2011.
A drafted bill in the state of New York has garnered much attention and zealous opinions from the alarm industry in the past few months. Article 6-E was developed by a committee of volunteers from the New York Burglar and Fire Alarm Association (NYBFAA) and would require all central stations to become licensed in the state in order to provide monitoring services. The licensing application would require fingerprinting of all operators and central station staff, a provision for potential State-required competency examinations and continued training among others.
The Boston Police Department has adopted a new policy in its public safety answering point (PSAP) that gives dispatch priority to video intrusion alarms. A security industry group including representatives from Stanley CSS, ASG Security, American Alarm, Wayne Alarm Systems and Videofied has been campaigning for PSAPs to implement formal procedures to deal with alarm events where video that confirms a probable crime in progress is present. Boston is the first large city to formally implement such a policy.