Table of Contents
CSAA AM Deadline Approaching
Thursday, October 6 is the deadline to register to attend the CSAA 2005 Annual Meeting. Please send your meeting and special tours registration forms if you have not had a chance to fax it. Don't miss this great meeting!
Dallas PD Considers Non-Response
Despite years of coordinated effort and communication with the Dallas PD, the Department is still considering stopping response to standard burglar alarm signals at all locations; hold-up, panic, and duress alarms will still receive response.
This decision was made in spite of a change in the state law that will now allow them to respond to fewer alarms at no charge, charge more for permits/fines and stop responding to chronic abusers. In addition, the Dallas PD is proposing to continue to charge businesses permit fees of $100. They are already collecting $4 million, which by their own calculations more than offsets the cost of officer response ! The city council is strongly in favor of passing this measure.
There will be a public hearing on this issue on October 12. At this point, only citizen/business outcry in the form of calls, e-mails and personal testimony at the public hearing can move the council members off this position. The council plan is to vote for this measure ONE WEEK after this pubic hearing.
If you have alarm related activity in the City of Dallas:
- Register to speak at the public hearing
- Inform your customers and encourage them to speak at the public hearing and show up to speak with friends, family and neighbors
- Contact your City Council member to let them know what you think
The North Texas Alarm Association (NTAA) has developed a sample letter that you may send to your customers or use as a sample to develop your own. The above link also includes City Council contact information.
Additional information can be found at http://alarminfo.org.
Alarm and VoIP Interoperability Test
Gordon Hope, Kevin Stebbins, Lou Fiore, Bernie Worst, Douglas Brainard, Rick Hinkson |
Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. (CableLabs®) of Louisville, Colorado, a nonprofit research and development consortium dedicated to helping its cable operator members integrate new cable telecommunications technologies into their business objectives, hosted a "Home Alarm and VoIP Interoperability Test" event the week of September 19th, 2005.
The primary goal of this event was to verify that digital alarm communications formats and downloaders can be successfully passed through a PacketCable-based VoIP network. |
Alarm System manufacturers’ representatives were Douglas Brainard of Bosch, Gordon Hope and Rick Hinkson of Honeywell, and Kevin Stebbins of GE Security. Also present were Bernard Worst of ADT and Lou Fiore, Chairman of the Alarm Industry Communications Committee (AICC), who help arranged the meeting with CableLabs. Each manufacturer brought a sampling of alarm panels and a receiver. The invited manufacturers provided the maximum number of formats with a minimum number of attendees.
PacketCable vendors included E-MTA (VoIP Cable Modems) providers ARRIS, Broadcom, Motorola, Scientific Atlanta, and Texas Instruments and MG (Media Gateways) providers Nuera and Cedar Point.
This event was the first of its kind, providing an open forum for both PacketCable vendors and Alarm System manufacturers to work together and to exchange technical information related to their respective technologies. Further, the event was able to satisfy its primary goal of verifying that digital alarm communications formats can be successfully passed through a PacketCable based VoIP network.
CableLabs anticipates that future events will be expanded to include more alarm system manufacturers and E-MTA and MG vendors.
