alarm companies?

[Dr.Mom]

Originally Posted by woodinvilleguy

I talked to them and they support vonage and time warner phone as well as a landline.

Thank you!

[treaves]

I sell security systems with ADT and I can guarantee you that your alarm system is being monitored out of some hole in the wall place. It's just not safe going with companies that have rates that low, because they are low for a reason. ADT has five monitoring facilities nationwide and that company has one, so I hope that facility never goes down because then all their customers will be screwed.

[XLadylawX]

I've often wondered about vonage and the other broadband phone service providers because when the power goes out I think the phone goes out too. Alarm systems have battery backups but I would presume that if the alarm were tripped during a power outage, the battery powered alarm system would not be able to transmit through the dead broadband phone.

We always keep an old fashioned phone in our house so that we have phone service during power outages.

[XLadylawX]

Looks like I found the answer to my above posted dilemma re the power on another thread. Apparently the alarm companies rely upon cell phone towers as backups during power outages. Still, that seems kinda scary since cell phone service seems to be less than ideal in many places of North Austin and vicinity.

[mickey65]

Originally Posted by treaves

I sell security systems with ADT and I can guarantee you that your alarm system is being monitored out of some hole in the wall place. It's just not safe going with companies that have rates that low, because they are low for a reason. ADT has five monitoring facilities nationwide and that company has one, so I hope that facility never goes down because then all their customers will be screwed.

I worked at ADT about 20 years ago as a Central Station monitor (one of the ones that call the police when the alarms go off). I can tell you from experience (back then) that burglar alarms are VERY low priority with the police departments, mainly because of all the false alarms. They'll go do something else and then find the time to get around to responding to a call on a burglary alarm.

In some areas, the police will start fining you after a certain amount of false alarms, since it costs money for the police to respond each time.

Just FYI, but like I said, maybe things have changed since I worked for the alarm companies...

[CptnRn]

We have had the police respond to our security alarm twice, both times they came out very quickly. I think they actually look forward to a chance to catch someone in the act of burglary, even if it is a false alarm most of the time. It beats writing traffic tickets.

[austin-acl-austin]

Austin fine policy is:

Type of CallNumber allowed
at no charge
in consecutive
12 month period$50 Each$75 Each$100 EachBurglary34-56-78 or moreRobbery
Panic2- - 3 or

[austin-acl-austin]

try this link for Austin fine policy: [URL="http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/police/alarmp.htm"]www.ci.austin.tx.us/police/alarmp.htm[/URL]