On Guard (cont.)

NEW CONNECTIONS. At press time, ADT, Alarm.com and Vivint were the only national companies that sell home-security systems that have Z-Wave capability. But that’s about to change. General Electric expects to join the crowd in 2012. And several regional home-security companies sell systems that have Z-Wave capability. In addition, major telecommunications companies also are getting into the home-security game. Comcast rolled out its first home-security monitoring service in September 2010 in limited markets; Verizon is scheduled to do the same this summer; and experts expect other cable and telephone companies to jump into the market in the years ahead.

But don’t expect that the added competition will force home-security-monitoring companies to cut prices, says Sam Lucero, who is a security analyst at ABI Research. That’s because the new players simply are filling a void that’s been left by 2 years of consolidation in the home-security industry, where national companies—most notably Brink’s—were bought out and regional providers went out of business after the collapse of the housing market.

In time, however, telecommunications companies could bundle home-security monitoring as part of a package of three or four services that also includes Internet, TV and telephone (landline or maybe even cellular) at a discount. (However, nobody is speculating what that discount might be.) In other words, the same service that allows you to watch Major League Baseball on TV also will try to keep you safe at home.

Gregory Scoblete is a freelance technology reporter and a regular contributor to Consumers Digest.