NEXTALARM.COM INTRODUCES NEW ALARM FEATURE
The NextAlarm team has been getting some really good buzz lately and they're doign some great things with alarm servcies over VoIP. I've talked with Bryan there in the past. I owe him an email on another subject and am looking forward to connecting with he or Alex in the near future to get more inside news on what they're doing.
NEXTALARM.COM INTRODUCES NEW ALARM FEATURE
Industry-First FAST Feature
OJAI, Calif. (February 14, 2007) – NextAlarm.com, The Broadband Alarm Company, today announced an industry-first feature, known as Fully Automated Sensor Telemetry (FAST). FAST lets the NextAlarm Abbra 2 Professional Series Security System send real-time status updates whenever an alarm sensor is engaged.
Normally, alarm systems will only send signals when an alarm is triggered, when the system is armed or disarmed, or when maintenance is required such as a low battery. FAST is more effective because it continually provides updates on the status of every sensor on the system (e.g., when a door or window is opened or closed). The FAST feature can be accessed by bringing up the status screen on NextAlarm’s website where it displays a list of all the sensors on the security system. It updates the account automatically in real time, showing when a sensor is opened or closed. For example, if a user is at work, he or she can check if a window was left open at home by simply checking his/her account on the NextAlarm website.
“The FAST technology brings alarm monitoring to a whole new level,” said Alex Elliot, NextAlarm.com’s founder and CEO. “This is the first publicly available, real-time system and keeps its owners informed every second of the day.”
At NextAlarm’s direction, Visonic designed and manufactured the NextAlarm Abbra alarm system and has offered it exclusively to NextAlarm in the new Abbra 2 alarm systems. FAST runs over NextAlarm’s ABN (Alarm Broadband Network), the industry’s first low-cost broadband solution for security system monitoring.
For more information on NextAlarm.com, visit www.NextAlarm.com.
About NextAlarm.com
NextAlarm.com, The Broadband Alarm Company, was established in 2000 by a team of alarm industry experts with more than 50 years of collective experience. The company provides service to thousands of homes and businesses nationwide, including those who have switched to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).
Technorati Tags: NextAlarm, VoIP, unified communications, alarm over VoIP
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Comments
This sounds a lot like a feature that uControl (www.ucontrol.com) offers. However, with uControl you dont' need to replace your existing security system.
Posted by: David | February 15, 2007 7:53 PM
David - Thanks for the feedback. I confess that while I've talked to the folks at NextAlarm, my real experience goes back about 30 years to monitoring circuits connected to alarm transponders in the old, circuit-switched telco world. I haven't been much involved in recent years, so I'm catching up and trying to understand the nuance here.
Realtime data is a different animal. It seems to me if the sensor/transponder/system provides continuous realtime updates, it should work. But it has to do some continuous realtime monitoring.
I'm just reading and speculating. I see it that NextAlarm partnered with Visonic to create that sort of realtime monitoring capability.
I certainly won't argue that there are plenty of very high-end realtime systems available, but they're for enterprise business security rather than the home.
I went to uControl's site looking to see how they do this. I found a demo and see remote arming and disarming capability, but nothing as granular as monitoring specific sensors in realtime.
Am I missing something? Maybe I need to dig deeper.
Posted by: Ken Camp | February 16, 2007 1:54 PM