Someone mentioned they used to use Alarm.com and now they use Teleguard due to almost instantaneous commands. I had never heard of them before. Who are they and how can they have no lag? I do notice lag with Alarm.com, but it is almost trivial.
I’m personally not very familiar with Telgaurd Interactive, but they are a very new alternative to the Alarm.com back end for 2GIG equipment. My understanding of their service is that because of its newness, it is less sophisticated than Alarm.com, with fewer features. If they’re using cellular signals, their lag time should be the exact same as that when using the Alarm.com back end, but if they are sending signals through IP rather than cellular signals, the time would differ. I’ll touch base with some of our full service technicians, who have more hands on experience comparing and contrasting systems, and get their two cents.
Thanks Amanda! 
This guy showed me his door and lights turning off the second he pressed a button on his app.
As a side note, I downloaded the Telguard app and ran the demo on my Android phone to start to familiarize myself with Telguard’s remote capabilities. I wanted to see how it compared with what I’ve been told. All I can gleam is that it offers the ability to arm or disarm the system remotely, but it does not seem to show the current status, or allow you the ability to do anything else. Not certain if that’s due to the fact I only had access to the demo? A quick read of the reviews seems to indicate otherwise.
Was it a phone app on which you saw this demonstration?
A phone app and I didn’t get to see much of it. They merely showed because they mentioned they also do security (we don’t ever want to leave SuretyCam) and when we said we use Alarm.com they quickly showed off TeleGuard.
Glad to hear you guys are with the best in Alarm.com. And certainly Alarm.com will continue to grow in features.
Teleguard UI sucks compared to ADC
Telguard’s home automation service is iControl, just like ADT Pulse, Comcast Xfinity, Time Warner IntelligentHome and all the other cable companies. It communicates via your broadband Internet connection so it has the potential to have less delay because it’s usually faster to initiate a connection through broadband than through cellular. I’ve complained to Alarm.com in the past about this but Alarm.com adamantly stands behind their decision to work through cellular towers instead of broadband/cable Internet connections. Alarm.com argues that they want their system to be ultra reliable and the cellular connection is far more reliable than the broadband/cable connection. Alarm.com is absolutely right about that. I run a security company that monitors many cellular and Internet based systems and the vast majority of problems we encounter are with the broadband connections, the cellular connections just seem to work almost all the time. The new Alarm.com compatible Qolsys panels have what they call dual path communication, which just means cellular and broadband, so I think we’ll start seeing less delay with dual path Alarm.com systems. 2GIG was supposed to release a dual path Alarm.com bridge for the Go!Control panel this year but it didn’t happen. I’m not sure where that went, 2GIG seems to have taken a year off and has done nothing in 2013 due to being purchased by Linear. Hopefully that will change in 2014. I’m thrilled to see Telguard jumping in and competing with Alarm.com as it will help keep Alarm.com on their toes, but Telguard has a LONG way to go just to get where Alarm.com already is today. Like rive said, so far the reviews speak for themselves - Alarm.com has very positive reviews on the app stores from many thousands of users while Telguard has mostly negative reviews from an obviously much smaller user base.
We are in British Columbia, Canada.
We have not used Alarm.com, but as of today we will not be quoting the 2GIG Alarm system after all the problems we and our customers have had with Telguard/Telular on the 2GIG Control. (At great cost to us)
Anyone that would like more information feel free to message me.
I would like to know what issues you’re seeing with the Telguard. We only use Alarm.com here and have very few issues with the 2GIG panel and Alarm.com.
The 2GIG panel and the wireless sensors work great, the problem we are having are coming with the Telular/Telguard/Home Control.
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One and done link to the customer to set up their account.
a) Customer makes a mistake typing in their email address one time and the link is no longer any good.
b) IF the Customer clicks on the link prior to the alarm being installed, again the link is no longer any good.
c) Having to wait onsite while the customer now install and sets up their App’s and Web Portal. -
We are still having problems with our Customers finding an error on their App and Web Portal that will only clear, after the Customer calls us and then we have to notify Telular/Telguard tech support to restart the system to clear the problem.
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If you try and use 2-way voice, the alarm signals come into the monitoring station out of order. The only fix we have found it we have to disable the 2-way voice.
a) The problem appears to be the Alarm and 2-Way voice go out to the station over landlines, and the restoral goes out over the IP network to the station. -
There is still now way to do a complete program remote with the Telular/Telguard radio.
We have a few other issues, loss of revenue that we have been left holing the purse on, the only reply we get…A copy of the Telular/Telguard Dealer Agreement Emailed to us.
We are being told that they have tons of these radios out, and no one else is having problems.
This however, is what we are finding…we did however take our Reps advise…we have started installing Honeywell.
Telguard is far from polished, and absolutely sucks compared to the ADC interoperability/UI. (That was your first mistake).
I also don’t follow your assertion that 2GIG 2way voice goes out over a landline…my understanding is that is only available via cellular, not POTS…
lmao @ your comment rive.
Telguard radio sends the alarm, restoral and 2Way voice over cellular to the clearing house run by Telular/Telguard… (rive… I am typing real slow so you can follow along).
One the signals hit the Telular/Telguard clearing house, they send the alarms and 2Way voice over land lines, while the restoral goes out over IP to the station.
You have to turn off 2way voice on 2GIG when using the Telular/Telguard radio so all signals go out from the 2GIG panel via the cellular and Only to the station only by IP.
Make it simple for you rive… IP is faster than landline.
And I have been doing this for over 25 years so I do understand how it works. Sadly Telular/Telguard did not seem to or they would have held the IP signals they were forwarding on, until the station acknowledged the receiving of the Alarms and 2-Way over the slower landlines.
Oh and why you ask… Because Surguard receiver does not transfer IP incoming 2Way voice request to a telephone line.
So panel sends signal out over cellular, when it hits telguard server, the telguard server then relays the 2Way voice and signals over POTS, and via internet protocol to central station…
Again, telguard sucks…everyone knows this, so why would you not go with ADC (that actually works). I am just not following I guess…why use a backend that even uses POTS to send signals? Were you unawares that this is how the backend worked?
Alarm.com’s module sends a digital signal via GPRS protocol to Alarm.com’s operations center.
The operations center then routes the signal over a secure, encrypted IP connection to the central station.
When the customers’ module receives confirmation back from Alarm.com’s operation center that the alarm signal went to the central station, it then initiates the voice connection allowing operators to communicate directly with the customer via two-way voice…
The thing these other companies don’t understand, they all want to be like Alarm.com but they don’t have any backend. .Telguard, Alarm net, , None of them have anything close to airfx tools. This alone separates alarm.com from the rest. I would however like for them to go toward the cell/ip communicator which they seem very hesitant to even talk about. They were kinda forced into supporting the ip by Qolsys and 2gig
Alarm.com and Telguard have very different approaches. Alarm.com does do 2-way voice over cellular, not land line. I’m surprised to hear that Telguard does it via land line. What if you don’t connect a land line to the panel?
SG3VCR,
How does the 2GIG panel communicate via IP? The panel itself does not yet have that capability. IP communication is still in beta testing neither the hardware or firmware required to do it have been released yet for production. Does the 2GIG Telguard radio module have WIFI or Ethernet to connect communicate via IP? Or are you just saying that Telguard clearinghouse uses IP when forwarding to the central station?
I’m not sure I completely understand your description of how Telguard works with 2-way voice but I’m very familiar with how Alarm.com does it. With Alarm.com it’s a bit weird also. Instead of sending a 2-way signal to the central station and having the central station dial into the panel (the traditional way of doing it) Alarm.com has the panel call the central station which does make things difficult for the central station because first they receive the alarm signal and then shortly after they receive an incoming 2-way phone call from the panel. It’s frustrating for the operator waiting for that 2-way call to come in when normally they would have dialed out immediately upon receiving the signal.
Telguard/Telular receive the alarms from the 2GIG system over the Cel radio at their clearing house.
It is Telguard/Telular that then forward on to the monitoring stations the alarms.
If 2WAY voice is being used. The alarm and the 2WAY voice are sent over landlines to the monitoring station. The restoral is sent from Telular/Telguard into the station on a IP receiver.