First of all, VOIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol. This service although generally less expensive than traditional telephone company land line service is lower in voice quality and much less reliable than a conventional land line. You need to be aware that if you are considering replacing your land line with VOIP service to save a few dollars per month, your existing alarm's system will no longer be able to communicate with your monitoring station unless you have had a cellular or radio back up module installed in your security alarm master control panel. You also must subscribe to a digital cellular monitoring service from your provider as well. Unfortunately, many of the VOIP service providers do not disclose this major drawback to their customers in their advertising, marketing, and sales literature. Their customers find out after they make the switch to VOIP that they are totally unprotected because their alarm systems will no longer transmit signals to their monitoring station. Some of the more reputable VOIP providers do warn their customers now to keep a conventional land line if they own a security alarm system. There is also module now available that can be purchased from most competent security dealers that can be installed in your security panel that will allow your panel to communicate with the monitoring station using VOIP service. However, this module is expensive and you are still vulnerable to internet connection outages, viruses, and power failure which would render your computer and VOIP service useless. We recommend that if you must have VOIP Service that you subscribe to ADT's Security Link digital cell backup monitoring service for only a few dollars more per month. With this added service you have the ultimate in security protection. In any event, whether you have a loss of phone service, someone cuts your phone line, or you suffer a power outage, the signal is transmitted over the air waves wirelessly (just like your cell phone) should you have an alarm event.

In the vast majority of the residential burglaries that occur in the United States the burglar does not cut the telephone line. There are several reasons for this. First of all remember, burglars are not rocket scientists. If they were intelligent they would be gainfully employed. Most burglars are juveniles or young drug addicts who are stealing to support their drug habit. They are simply not smart enough to cut the phone line, nor do they know where the phone line is located. Recently, one career burglar was interviewed while in jail. He was asked if he ever thought about cutting the phone line before he burglarized a house. He said that he thought about it but didn't know which wire the phone line was and he was afraid that he would be electrocuted if he cut the wrong line! Burglars who rob commercial businesses however are typically a bit more sophisticated. Also, these burglars know that they can go behind they building or in an alley and work without being seen. It is for these reasons businesses are at a much higher risk than private residences are for their phone lines being cut prior to their break in. Consequently many commercial businesses such as banks and jewelry stores are required by their insurance companies to have digital cell back up monitoring added as a back-up to their primary land line security monitoring.

Let us begin by stating that there is a vast difference in quality, competence, and professionalism between security companies and their monitoring command centers. Burglars and thieves know this. The yard signs of no-name, obscure, or fledgling security companies do not provide the same strong crime deterrent value that a well known, well respected security company like ADT commands. The ADT logo is the 54^th most recognized logo in the world. It even ranks higher than the CocaCola logo in name recognition. Professional burglars know the difference in the quality of security companies and they respect the ADT yard sign and the corresponding level of protection it affords. ADT recently conducted a survey that showed that the ADT yard sign alone deters 76% of all would be burglars. On the other hand, burglars see some other competitor's yard sign as an easy mark, a home that has system with a vulnerability that can be easily exploited and defeated.

If you are looking for the best protection with the very best monitoring redundancy, choose the security company with the yard sign with the highest crime deterrent value: ADT.

Unless your home is already pre-wired for window contacts we don't recommend that you incur the added expense of purchasing window contacts. Adding window contacts to your system is very labor intensive and costly. Additionally window contacts are prone to service problems down the line. Over time as your house settles and your windows absorb moisture, window contacts can become misaligned and can be rendered inoperable. This can cause false alarms with your system. Also, window contacts can be defeated if a burglar enters your home by simply breaking your window glass and then enters through the damaged window. We recommend preventing burglars from entering through windows by installing our patented glassbreak detectors that are designed to trigger an alarm response by discriminating the sound of broken window glass. Glassbreak detectors are also far less expensive to install than window contacts. Many of our customers also decide to add another layer of redundant protection by installing our infrared motion detectors in each room as a back up. We offer our customers significant savings when they select bundled packages for higher levels of protection.

One of the biggest myths that smaller, local independent security companies have promoted and circulated over the years is that local monitoring is better than out of state monitoring. Don't believe their deceitful propaganda because exactly the opposite is true. Many of these smaller, local alarm companies try to persuade their prospective customers to sign up with them, telling them that because they are based in the same town or city, they know the area better than the employees of an out of state monitoring station. This is a false and misleading sales pitch. Because of the many risks associated with local monitoring, security experts tell us never to monitor your home with a local monitoring station. There are a number of reasons.

First, ADT uses five fully redundant monitoring stations to monitor each of their customers. If one of their monitoring stations was disabled due to a flood, hurricane, tornado, fire, or terrorist event, the other four monitoring stations would still be monitoring all of our customers without so much as a hiccup. You can't get that level of redundancy and protection from a small, local security company. The local security companies will try to downplay the possibility of a catastrophic event shutting them down, but we have seen it happen, and we predict it will happen with more frequency in the future with climate change. If you will remember when Katrina struck a few years ago, there were several monitoring stations in the New Orleans area. Some of them were shut down for several days when they were flooded with over nine feet of water. Most of these companies went out of business and their customers were left without security protection. Hurricanes or catastrophic weather events have never affected any of ADT's customers. Next, the claim by locally monitored alarm companies that since they are local, they can dispatch the police and medical emergency personnel to your home faster is false and misleading. When ADT activates a new customer, a customer profile is built for that customer. All important and critical information is included in that profile including name, address, phone numbers, cross streets, map numbers, emergency phone contacts, passwords, the numbers for the closest local police, fire, medical emergency departments, even the closest major cross streets to that customer. If a burglar event occurs, ADT immediately relays this important and vital information to the customer's local police department. It is the local police department who responds, and they obviously have a thorough knowledge of the geography in their local jurisdiction and will have no problem finding the customer's home quickly.

As far as the installing security dealership, it is always far better to have your security system installed by a locally owned, or locally headquartered security dealer versus an out of town, out of state, or foreign non-U.S. based security company. Most local companies are very concerned about the reputation in their local community. As a result, they usually go the extra mile for their customers. Locally headquartered companies also contribute to the cities that they are based in with their time, talents, money, and energies. They also provide more jobs in the community and their profits usually stay in the same community, helping the local economy.

Out of state dealers are not as concerned about their image in your community. They are only interested in maximizing profit for their investors and owners, and the bottom line. They usually don't contribute to the local community either, and their profits and revenues go back to the home office city in their home state or worse, the foreign country that they are based in. These non-local companies do very little to provide jobs or monetary assistance to the local economy either. Most don't even maintain a actual office in you community or hire full time employees. Instead, they use telemarketing, direct mail, the internet, and even local yellow pages with a toll free "800" number as their headquarters to sign up their customers over the telephone. After the customer is sold over the phone, these companies then send part-time, inexperienced sub-contractors to install their alarm system. Most of these companies don't employ professional security consultants to meet with their customers to professionally design their security systems. Instead, they eliminate the security consultant to maximize their profit and use the one-size-fits-all cookie cutter approach. One of these companies headquartered in Canada boasts "you deal directly with us". What this really means is we'll sell you over the phone and then send out a part time sub-contractor to install our standard system in your home.

Be wary about these out of state and non-U.S. based companies. When you sign an agreement with them, you are governed by the laws of their state or foreign country. If you are not happy with their service, or if they damage your home, you have to come to their state or country to sue them. Some are not even licensed in our state.

One important question to ask each prospective security system providers is whether their offer is based on your owning the equipment or just leasing the equipment. Most large national companies will not disclose the fact they are putting you in a lease, or a rental of their equipment instead of an ownership situation. Even though your are paying an installation fee and an equipment fee, you will never actually own the equipment even after paying for the monitoring for 3 years, 4 years, 5 years, or longer. Additionally, if you decide to change companies, you find that you are locked into that company because the equipment they use is proprietary and no one else can monitor it. In some instances it is inferior equipment like the security system offered by the publicly traded Canadian company whose equipment manufactured in Mexico has no keypads and is sometimes installed to the customers wall with Velcro strips! Most experts agree that it is far better to own your own system whether you buy it outright, or you finance it over a 36 month monitoring agreement. This way you are in the drivers seat. You can continue the monitoring with your present company after the 36 month agreement is up, or you can shop around for another company if you don’t like their service. As an authorized dealer of ADT Security Services, American Guardian offers true equipment ownership to their customers. At the end their 36 month monitoring agreement they own the security equipment outright.Then they can call ADT and negotiate a much lower monitoring rate.

Actually, there are several manufactures that offer quality equipment. The best security equipment is manufactured by DSC, Honeywell Ademco, and GE. They are also the biggest in the industry. We use equipment from all three manufacturers depending on our customer's requirements, but we prefer DSC for a number of reasons. The important thing to remember is to never do business with a security company that uses their own proprietary equipment. Also, never do business with a company that uses an obscure equipment manufacturer that other dealers won't monitor or service.This locks you in to that company and leaves you vulnerable and exposed to poor service, high prices, and the whim of that installing security company. One local Atlanta security company who boasts that they offer "Real Security" recently left their customers high and dry when one of these obscure equipment manufactures that they had used for their customers went out of business. Now this company, whose main claim to fame is an $18.95 monitoring rate (no maintenance included), has thousands of customers with obsolete equipment that they can no longer get parts for. Evidently this is that company's idea of "Real Security". When we tried to find out why any company would want to take that risk with their customers, we learned from one of their former employees that their business model was built around using security equipment that other competitors would not want to use or work on. By using this strategy, they reasoned that they could keep their customers locked into them much longer. So, don't take unnecessary risks and make sure that the security company that you select uses quality, name brand, mainstream equipment that can be serviced by other dealers in you market place should you decide to switch companies.