Articles by Bill Zalud

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.
 

If you reassure Harriett Knight, you’ll be assured that, with a significant reduction in false alarms, the highest priority calls will get quicker response.

Knight, a supervisor in the 9-1-1 Detroit call center, says her operators receive more than 300 calls a day. She added the city’s recent commitment to enhanced call verification (ECV) through a partnership with local and national security industry leaders created a level of trust that has impacted the quality of police and emergency response on the city streets.