Hot Seat: Rallying Around Radio Spectrum
Michael Sherman
President and CEO
AES Corp.
We at AES-Intellinet have embraced the concept that a dealer owning and controlling its communication channel can never be surprised or hurt by the business plans of the phone or cell phone companies. By embracing and taking control of their entire service platform they can add services without the cost and technical travails of the cellular carrier.
You have worked in the alarm business for more than 30 years. Can you put into perspective the significant changes that have taken place in alarm signal transmission?
Technology is moving at an exponential pace especially when you consider that for almost 100 years the alarm industry used copper wires that were dedicated to a single alarm signaling requirement. Then came the voice dialer, the digital dialer, and along with that the escalation of the speed and amount of data that these dialers presented to the alarm company. Things where relatively slow with small incremental changes until the mid-1990s.
AES-IntelliNet was introduced in its first incarnation in 1995. About that time high-speed data lines became useful to the industry and the emergence of another form of wireless alarm signaling became available, the cellular alarm communication. This was in the form of the AMPS system. The AMPS technology was replaced by GSM and it is anticipated that GSM will be functionally gone by 2015, to be replaced by the first version of LTE [4G].
In each case, the effective lifetime of cellular communications technology has been half of the prior cell technology. The only wireless technology exception to this has been AES-IntelliNet where we have maintained backward compatibility to provide technology stability to our users. Communications will continue to evolve as the industry chases the commercial technology advancements. Look for more video and remote control in both the home and commercial sectors. We might also see a morphing of the industry into other service sectors.
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About the Author
Rodney Bosch, Senior Editor
Although Bosch’s name is quite familiar to those in the security industry, his previous experience has been in daily newspaper journalism. Prior to joining SECURITY SALES & INTEGRATION in 2006, he spent 15 years with the Los Angeles Times, where he performed a wide assortment of editorial responsibilities, including feature and metro department assignments as well as content producing for latimes.com. Bosch is a graduate of California State University, Fresno with a degree in Mass Communication & Journalism. In 2007, he successfully completed the National Burglar and Fire Alarm Association’s National Training School coursework to become a Certified Level I Alarm Technician.
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