Re: the police was dispatched to ... the wrong house

["Mark Leuck" <m..leuck@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Robert L Bass" <RobertLBass@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:_vbxi.68589$SV4.17495@xxxxxxxxxxx
>
> For a small central station, having 4 lines in 2
> hunting groups for just ~1,000 accounts is no
> big deal.  In our case, almost all of our clients
> were local so we didn't use 800 numbers.

Right thats the cheap approach you keep hapring about, 4 receivers and 4
lines for 1,000 accounts

> Monitronics claims to have nearly 500,000
> monitored accounts.

No well over 600,000

>  If they follow minima, they
> have over 700 receiver phone numbers (lines).
> If they did daily test or O/C on all accounts
> they would need at least doubly that.  They
> would also need twice as many resceivers, line
> cards, etc.  Monitronics would need larger
> facilities with more backup power to accomodate
> the additional hardware

That would only be the case if we went by your limited experience with
central station receivers, I don't know what you used but my guess might be
SurGard MLR-2's which is a good basic 2-line receiver but still old
technology.

We have several inbound T-1's feeding 4 SurGard MLR-2000's with an
additional 4 MLR-2000's as backup in the same building as well as 4 more
running in a remote backup site. EACH MLR-2000 is capable of handling
between 750,000 to 900,000 accounts with a full 80 line cards available with
each handling well over 1,000 line designations, they had no problems
handling the massive amount of traffic that comes in during hurricane season
and they'll handle any other disaster that may come along. Power-wise they
use less than the typical stacks of MLR-2's or Silent Knights that people
often see at other central stations which throws your "need more backup
power" out the window. BTW I doubt you've even seen a picture of our
building much less know how it's powered.

They don't use fixed line designations like the old receivers so you don't
need the same amount of phone lines you would with a standard receiver, you
might want to read up on how they work. We also have several ITI CS-5000's,
Radionics 6600's, Ademco MX-8000's and Honeywell 7810IR Internet receivers.

> > I've NEVER heard anyone bitch about the cost
> > of phone service...
>
> Of course not.  By doing the bare minimum they
> keep their overhead low and maximize profits.
> They have nothing to jiminex about.

Well lets see who's being cheap, someone who ran a central station from his
bedroom or a company who has several fully redundent MLR-2000's at 2 sites?

> > and since you've never seen our central stations
> > and you don't have a clue what receivers we
> > have you really can't say we are cheap...
>
> We know that in order to do it right you would
> need to invest in lots more hardware, not to
> mention trebling your telco line charges and
> quadruping (at least) your 800 number costs.

Exactly