Every day Emergency Medical Services (EMS) personnel put their lives on the line in order to help the public. This coming week kicks off National EMS Week (May 20-26) and their theme this year is "EMS: More Than A Job. A Calling".  EMS personnel are comprised of Emergency Physicians, Emergency Nurses, Emergency Medical Technicians, Paramedics, Firefighters and Educators. EMS personnel truly have a calling to do what they do when it comes to acting as medicine's "Front Line" and providing their lifesaving services 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week. While most communities have full time EMS personnel who have chosen this as their career, their are still many communities where these services are provided by volunteers. Their primary job is to provide quality medical care to those who experience sudden illness or injury in order to dramatically improve the survival and recovery rate of those that they help. We at Dial One Security see this first hand through the calls that come into our monitoring central station and through the dedication of one of our own employees, Rob Singer, who serves on the City of Reading, Ohio's fire department and provides these services daily.

None of us really know when we will be in need of EMS services, but we all can be assured that they will be there for us in our time of need. It is because of their dedication and passion to help others, we should all go out of our way to thank an EMS worker next week!

Dial One Security has again been selected to provide monitoring for the City of Cincinnati's Fire Alarms and Security Systems along with providing service and testing of the equipment. Dial One Security has provided the bulk of these services to the City for the past 25 years. 

The contract with the city will provide these services for most of the City's Departments including the Police Department, Fire Department, Recreation Department, Parks Department, Facility Management, Parking Facilities, 911 Center, and MSD.

We are currently installing systems in some of the new buildings that are part of the Banks Project along Cincinnati's central riverfront.

On Saturday April 21, ten employees of Dial One Security volunteered to participate in the Great American Cleanup. This year we chose to cleanup a very steep and winding portion of Kenwood Rd. This is a section of the road, near our offices in Madisonville, that had been neglected for years due to how dangerous it is to not only drive on, let alone pick up trash along the side of the road. With the help of the Cincinnati Police Department, who furnished us with two police officers and their cars to help with our security, we were able to control the flow of traffic and conduct a through cleaning of the roadside. We removed four full pickup truck loads of trash, bottles, cans and tires, all of which were taken to a drop of point for the city to haul away. As part of the cleanup, we also cleaned out storm sewer grates and gutters, trimmed back some of the overgrowth that was growing next to the road as well as cut up and removed a large tree that had fallen and was laying along the side of the road.

This has always been a great experience for our employees to give back to the community and truely make a difference. We look forward to this event every year.

In an article published on the front page of the USA Today newspaper this week it is once again apparent that the days of the telephone land line are numbered. Two states, Indiana and Wisconsin, have already passed legislation to allow phone companies to eliminate land lines. Alabama, Kentucky and Ohio are considering similar legislation.

The phone companies claim that the elimination of the land line system will allow for additional investments in new technologies, while opponents argue that affordable service, will be especially in rural areas, will not be readily available.

For the past several years the alarm industry has known that the days of the landline are numbered and have begun to implement alternate communication strategies, mainly cellular communications through the GSM network. With the addition of cellular communications, you can not only save money by eliminating your home phone line, and thus the monthly phone bill, but these systems actually provide a safer connection to the central station since there are no phone lines outside the building that can be cut and communication is instantaneous. They also have the capability of sending a dual signal, one over the GPRS cellular network, and if that signal is unavailable, the communicator will send a secondary signal as a SMS message.

While many people have begun to switch their home phones over to VoIP through their cable company or other internet providers, these systems are often unreliable and often have trouble communicating with the alarm panel. The failure to communicate can occur when the power goes out and the internet or cable system is temporarily unavailable. The other problem comes with the way the analog data is converted from the alarm panel into digital information packets for the internet so that they can be transported over the VoIP system and then converted from digital information packets back to an analog signal at the central station. When the internet is slow these information packets may be slowed, thus causing a communication failure.

With the coming demise of the land line, Dial One Security will be there to offer our clients the best possible choices for their alarm communications.

Be on the lookout for our New Dial One Security commercials during the morning news and afternoon programming on Fox19. The ads began running this week and feature Total Connect as a great feature that can be added to your security system.

 With Total Connect you can arm and disarm your security system remotely from your smartphone or any internet connected computer. You are also able to receive alerts of events such as a child coming home from school and opening the door or if there is an alarm signal from the security system, or other connected devices such as smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors or high and low temperature sensors. Up to six Total Connect cameras can be viewed remotely either on your smartphone or computer. The system can be configured to allow your to set up a virtual fence and detect motion when someone enters the zone and send an image of the activity. There are three bacis types of Total Connect cameras, an exterior camera which is great for monitoring the activity at a door, a stationary interior camera for a set view of a room and a Pan / Tilt / Zoom camera that gives you the flexibility of looking around a space.

The commercial emphasizes that Dial One Security is a local company that has been serving the security needs of the Greater Cincinnati region for over thirty-two years. We also own and operate our own Central Station for monitoring our clients alarm signals.

While the commercial is running we are offering a special deal on a ReadyGuard Touch complete security system for $99 installed. This system includes the touch control panel, one motion sensor, three window / door contacts, one wireless fob, window stickers and a yard sign. If you mention that you saw the commercial on Fox19, we will also give you three months of Free Monitoring.

If you just can't wait to see the commercial, you can visit the Dial One Security YouTube Channel  and watch them any time you wish. Just remember to "like" the commercial while your there!

Dial One Security is once again sponsoring a foursome at the annual Outback Steakhouse Big Brothers Big Sisters Golf Outing on May 7. The non-profit agency pairs adult mentors with children in the tri-state who can benefit from a positive role model. The event is held every year at the Kenwood Country Club and has helped raise more than $2.5 million for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Cincinnati.

OnMarch 8, 2012, Paul Perme was invited to attend the City of Edgewood Kentucky’s Senior Expo as part of the Connecting Hearts Exhibit. Paul was able to share with many ofthe seniors in attendance the importance of the PERS (PersonalEmergency Response System) Devices offered by Dial One Security. These devices integrate into your Security System and are most frequently worn either as a pendant around your neck, on a wristband, or as a panic button that allow the user to summon emergency help at the push of a button.

The PERS Devices allow the users to maintain their sense of freedom by helping them to live in their homes as long as possible, while providing their family members with the piece of mind that if their loved one should have an emergency, help is but the push of a button away.

If you should have any questions about the PERS Devices from Dial One Security, give Paul a call at 513-527-4400

After recent copper thefts, like the one at Glenway Crossing, where copper thieves did an estimated $250,000 in damage and $150,000 in copper was stolen, have forced the City of Cincinnati Public Safety Committee to look at ways to curb the rash of metal thefts. City council is considering requiring anyone who is tring to sell scrap metal within the City of Cincinnati to obtain a license and undergo a background check first.

Representatives from the scrap metal industry argue that this will just force the sale of scrap metal to outside the city limits and cost jobs at the scrap yards within the city and potentially force those businesses to close. Vice-Mayor Roxanne Qualls stated to industry representatives about the sale of stolen metal that "It is a small portion of your business. So I think you ought to urge yourself and your clients to restrain themselves before they make allegations of being put out of business."

City council is slated to take up this matter again in two weeks.

In the mean time, Dial One Security offers several solutions to protect your premises and your air conditioning units from copper thieves. Call Dennis Toon to discuss your options at 513-527-4400

Dial One Security and Honeywell Security have just released the 2nd generation Total Connect Video Viewer.  The new video viewer module design takes full advantage of Total Connect 2.0’s interactive dashboard. A film-strip style layout allows auto-preview of all cameras within the video services account.  Streaming video is then a click away by selecting the desired camera image.  Another convenient feature of the new video viewer is the ability to stream video outside of the Total Connect dashboard.  Simply select streaming of one or more cameras and you can view video directly from your computer's desktop. Give Dial One Security a call to find out more about the new Total Connect Video Viewer.

New Video Viewer for Total Connect

On the night of Monday January 23rd, a client of Dial One Security had the waste oil from their car dealership stolen. The theft occurred around 2 am in the morning and involved a large tanker truck that pulled into their lot. Waste oil is sold for about 50 cents a gallon in bulk.

This is part of a new rash of crimes that not only target used waste oil from vehicles, but also waste vegetable oil (WVO) from restaurants, also refered to as "Yellow Grease". The cooking oil is used in the production of biodiesel fuel and can sell for $0.44 per pound. WVO weighs about 7.5 pounds per gallon, which equates to $3.30 per gallon.

As commodity prices continue to rise, anything of value  becomes a more likely target of theft.