§275 Alarm Monitoring Services

Summary

Bell operating companies and their affiliates must not offer alarm monitoring services until the date that is 5 years after February 8, 1996. If a Bell company was already providing alarm monitoring on November 30, 1995, it may keep doing so, but it may not buy or gain control of any unaffiliated alarm monitoring company after November 30, 1995 and until 5 years after February 8, 1996, except that it may swap customers with an unaffiliated alarm company. Any incumbent local exchange carrier that offers alarm monitoring must, when asked, give unaffiliated companies the same network services it gives its own alarm business on equal terms. It must not pay for alarm monitoring from money from its telephone exchange services. The Commission must set up complaint rules, decide complaints within 120 days, and if a complaint shows a likely violation, order the carrier to stop within 60 days while the case is decided. A local exchange carrier may not record or use calls to alarm monitors for marketing; rules to enforce this must be issued within 6 months after February 8, 1996. Alarm monitoring service: a device at a fixed location that detects threats (for example, burglary, fire, vandalism, bodily injury, or other emergency) and sends a signal over a local carrier’s transmission facilities or an affiliate’s to a remote monitoring center to alert someone to notify the customer or emergency responders.