The licensed remote monitoring segment of the alarm industry is still highly fragmented, leaderless, and functioning in conflict with public safety. This status was reinforced by recent Newsletter debates among leading providers of hardware, software, services, responsibilities… and arrogance. Their ageing business model (with added bells and whistles) assumes local police will jump, on-demand, whenever they call for help, for whatever reason. Which provides justification for law enforcement to exit from the aging “public/private partnership”… ie. treat monitored deterrent property alarms like nuisance auto alarms.
Local cops are focused on UPR “Unnecessary Police Response”, while monitoring firms are still focused on management of “Alarm Signals & False Alarms”… very different problems/solutions. And the recent ADT/Apollo IPO has forced lots of uncomfortable “disclosure”. The basic business model is broken and needs to be replaced, not just tweaked or repaired (Near 99% error/false = 8-15 % police budgets). The cops will win this tug-o-war!!
Firms in this space include ADT; Lydia/dba COPS; Rapid Response; EM24; Monitronics/Moni; (2000 more); about 20 Million monitored customers that produce about $600 Million RMR with market value about $20 Billion. The market value of RMR could be diluted by several $Billion … a really big deal worth watching and planning if you are a player in this space. Many IPVM members are serious players.
Source: Lee Jones; Support Services Group; leessg@att.net