News Items From 2004

8/30/2004    FCC Prevents ANI on Private Calls

Since the deployment of the super receiver in 1994 Central One dealers have enjoyed real time ANI (like caller id) in their alarm history for every signal received.  It has been immensely helpful in locating the source of phantom signals (errant signals from panels sending the wrong account number).  Recently the Federal Communications Commission passed a rule that telephone companies can no longer pass real time ANI if the caller has invoked the privacy feature for the call or for the phone line in general.  In the future you may notice an ANI in an alarm history that looks like "000-000-0000" or "941-000-0000".  Both of these entries indicate that the ANI was blocked.  The second example shows that the central station software will insert the area code of the subscriber's main premises number.

8/12/2004    Hurricane Charley Threatens Portions of Florida

Hurricane Charley is forecast to break land near Tampa, Florida then travel northeast.  Click for map.  The hurricane is no threat to Central One's monitoring facility, which is designed to withstand hurricanes.  Central One will suspend monitoring in Florida counties where the hurricane is active.  Police and Fire departments do not respond to alarms during hurricanes nor should anyone else.

7/21/2004    Milwaukee Stops Responding to Alarms

The issue is far from dead.  Who could be next?  Read the letter from the Milwaukee Police. 

5/13/2004    Significant Enhancements to Account Display

Central One has substantially enhanced the subscriber account display in the dealer access section of the web site.  Dispatch agencies, signal definitions, special instructions and partitions with business hours schedules have been added.  The new account display reduces the need to use the Citrix remote terminal.  The terminal will continue to be used for editing accounts, account number and receiver line administration, and some special reports.

4/1/2004    Is Your Web Site Interactive?

Central One can help you make your web site interactive and allow your subscribers to access their information and alarm history and test their system without ever leaving your web site.  True this functionality is available at www.mysecurityalarm.com but that is not your web site.  A seminar will be held at Central One on Tuesday, May 4, 2004 at 6:00 p.m. to demonstrate the capabilities of Central One's XML web service technology and how you can put it to use.  You will probably need the help of a web designer or programmer to implement interactive features on your own site.  At the seminar we will provide sample code and explain the capabilities of the XML services.  We will also have a drawing for "Visual Basic .NET Deluxe Learning Edition".  For those of you ambitious enough to write code this provides everything you need to create a fully interactive web site.  The next generation of Central One's Alarm Traffic Manager software will expand upon the existing web services and allow total integration of the central station with your web site and office management software.  Click here to rsvp for the seminar.

4/13/2004    Preview Our Next Generation Subscriber Database

The programmers at Central One are working hard to develop the next generation of the Alarm Traffic Manager monitoring software.  The version 3 database is starting to take shape and you can look at it if you wish to make comments or suggestions.  Central One dealers may click here to request a preview by email.

3/24/2004    Lost Your Nextel Bookmarks?

Bookmarks are usually item 7 after you select the Net menu option on your Nextel phone.  If this option disappears, scroll down to the item, "Nextel Home" and select it.  Your bookmarks option will magically reappear after you do this.  It seems that Nextel is making software changes.

3/16/2004    UL Certificate Now On Line

Our new UL certificate has been received and is on line.  Also check out the UL web site for certificate verification service and more.

3/1/2004    Subscriber Log Reports by Email

Periodic subscriber reports, such as open/close reports and all event reports may now be emailed to subscribers.  You may continue to use faxing and ordinary mail as options.

2/19/2004    Cisco Phone System On Line

After extensive technical difficulties and delays our new Cisco phone system is now on line as is our Wygant voice recorder.  The Zeacom Smartconnect call center management software is now providing us with better response time and performance reporting than our previous system could provide.  Central One supervisors have a real time display of all operator telephone status.  Voice recordings can easily be pulled using the number we called or the number that called us.

2/6/2004    Possible eMail Problems

Some internet service providers are now looking up sender names and matching the IP address from the look-up to the IP address of the actual sender.  If the addresses do not match the message is discarded as possible spam.  This new practice has caused some of our email to be discarded.  We send mail from our proprietary mail server that has one address, and receive mail via Message Labs at another address (a reverse DNS lookup will give you Message Labs' address).  We are working on a solution to this issue.  In the mean time you should add centralone.com and mysecurityalarm.com to your white list or preferred list to prevent some ISP's from blocking us.

1/22/2004    CSAA Pushes Federal License Reciprocity Legislation

If successful Central Stations will be required to meet the licensing requirements of their own state and will not be required to get a license in every city, county and state where they monitor an alarm system.  This legislation is sorely needed and we urge all dealers to strongly support it.  More.

1/22/2004    Cisco Cut Did Not Happen Again

Vendor engineers could not resolve a critical issue so the switch to the Cisco AVVID phone system did not take place as scheduled.  We are hopeful that the problem will be resolved and the cut will take place before the end of the month.  The cut is now rescheduled for Wednesday, February 11, 2004 at 8:00 p.m. ET.

1/19/2004    Cisco Phone System to be Cut In on Wednesday

Central One will switch to the new Cisco AVVID phone system at 17:00 hours on Wednesday, January 21, 2004.  This switch will not impact receiver lines only central station voice, fax and fax back.  We anticipate less than two minutes of down time per voice circuit as they are cut over.  We anticipate that fax machines, fax back and other analog devices will be down no more than fifteen minutes.  The installation of the Cisco system has been nothing short of an adventure but the benefits will become apparent once we are running smoothly.  Most importantly, digital voice recordings will be searchable by number called or number calling.  We anticipate recordings to be available via the internet in the months to follow.