February 22, 2012

 

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Comment

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Hello Ken and interested parties.

I have been following this string with great interest as it touches at the heart and soul of SIAC's mission.

My personal feeling about audio has always been that it is a niche product that has never really been accepted by the main stream alarm customers or alarm purveyors. However, clearly Sonitrol is the Xerox of listen in technology and has built a very successful business model on selling this technology and creating great customer loyalty and law enforcement support. As I understand it; Sonitrol is now making a natural progression by adding video monitoring to their other products. I am certain they will be successful in this transition but to say that any technology is not part of the false dispatch problem is a stretch.

Over the last 15 years I have had access to alarm statistics from many jurisdictions and no one technology is more or less immune from customer error. It is what happens once those signals reach the monitoring point that determines success when the barometer of success is false dispatches. While sitting through scores of standards meetings it is obvious there are many hurdles that must be overcome when we talk about any technology replacing the traditional systems that have been the mainstay of the alarm market. Even video has severe limitations if there is no filtering being done prior to dispatching on any signal regardless of the source of the signal.

A better place for the industry to direct our attention is not the equipment, it is the use of the equipment. Initiatives such as ECV, while vital to reducing the false dispatch problem, don't address the root cause, they simply treat the symptoms. If we are ever to have a real impact we MUST do a better job of training the alarm users. To help the entire industry accomplish this SIAC has prepared materials that, have been diligently researched over a long period of time, and when applied, can be over 90% successful in reducing unnecessary dispatches. These materials are totally free and can be obtained by sending a request to training@siacinc.org or by visiting siacinc.org. As always, this is a great forum that is healthy for the industry in all of our efforts to improve the life safety of the public.

Ron Walters, Director

Security Industry Alarm Coalition