NationWide Digital partners with Visonic

FREEPORT, N.Y. and BLOOMFIELD, Conn.—NationWide Digital Monitoring on Oct. 15 announced a partnership with Visonic to receive IP and GSM/GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) signals from Visonic alarm panels, allowing multiple pathways of communication between the alarm panel and NationWide's central station.

The drive to provide multiple communication pathways has been increasingly at issue with the advent of new communications technologies like VoIP, radio and cellular, which are quickly rendering traditional telephone (or POTS—Plain Old Telephone Service) lines obsolete. A recent tweet from Vector Security's Pam Petrow—on location at the Central Station Alarm Association Annual Meeting in Athens, Greece—announced Verizon's 10-year life expectancy prediction of POTS lines.

According to NationWide EVP and chief technology officer Mark Fischer, Visonic's IP/Cellular link creates an additional method of wireless communication between NationWide and alarm systems that use the Visonic PowerMax Express and PowerMax Pro series of panels. Visonic's IP and GSM/GPRS communication enables the panels to transmit alarm signals without the need for phone lines or other hardwired connections. “There's a move on in the world to move away from POTS phone lines … What this partnership means to dealers is that they now have a way to preempt all sorts of problems. You now have the ability for a single panel to have a POTS line, a GSM radio, and an Internet connection,” Fischer said. “By allowing multiple paths you have a higher degree of security at a very reasonable cost.”

Visonic VP of sales Mark Ingram felt the partnership also afforded dealers more opportunity to grow their business through the Smith & Wesson brand. “NationWide is the central station for Smith & Wesson and we are one of two manufacturing vendors for Smith & Wesson products,” Ingram said. “From our standpoint, what we try and always provide for dealers is another way, another source of approaching the market,” Ingram said. “This partnership gives dealers a different way of going to market … It gives them more of their own marketing and their own ability to get into a market.”

Fischer also pointed out the partnership would give dealers the ability to combine video, Web access, and SMS messaging along with a supervised communications link to NationWide's central station, which he said would provide enhanced customizable, scalable security for both residential and commercial subscribers.