Paging Carriers Seek to Provide Alarm Monitoring Services 

Because paging carriers are suffering in the stock market and are hungry for business, it appears that they might be configuring their one- and two-way services to provide various alarm monitoring services. 

CSAA members should be aware of this development, which may be both a competitive threat and an opportunity. In particular, alarm companies may want to consider entering into strategic relationships with commercial wireless carriers to provide their customers with a choice of different ways to access their alarm data from remote locations. 

At a healthcare facility manager's conference in Seattle recently , paging carrier Metrocall said that it will provide specialized wire-less applications to support remote facilities engineering and alarm monitoring for such critical environments as medical campuses and security installations. The carrier's Systems Applications Division reportedly customizes its proprietary Integrated Resource Management system and/or integrates the software applications of its strategic partner Emergin, Inc., to meet the varied demands of facility and infrastructure management professionals.

According to Metrocall, building managers can use the carrier's local, regional and nationwide networks to receive immediate notification about "out-of-tolerance" events within critical environments such as temperature changes at blood banks and HVAC engineering crises. 

In light of this development, alarm monitoring companies may want to examine how both new and existing mobile data technologies may be incorporated into their current systems to enhance the availability and/or usefulness of various service offerings. 

Where additional security of alarm signals is a concern, alarm companies should emphasize to their customers that central station radio channels are frequencies that may be used only for central station signaling. Services provided by paging carriers such as Metrocall involve the use of common carrier channels that may not meet rigid security requirements.

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