C.O.P.S. ready to open fourth central in Nashville

WILLIAMSTOWN, N.J.—C.O.P.S. Monitoring on Nov. 29 announced plans to expand from three central stations to four, adding a Tennessee center to its three existing locations in New Jersey, Florida and Arizona. It's a move that gives the company an advantage, according to C.O.P.S. director of marketing and communications David Smith.

“Many independent alarm dealers are uncomfortable with a single 'mega-center' located thousands of miles from their customers,” Smith said. “It seems that everyone is trying to consolidate to control costs. However, we feel expanding our presence in regional markets differentiates us by better supporting those dealers who prefer more local and personable levels of service.”

The new center is scheduled to open in the first quarter of 2011. The 4,100 square-foot facility will run live with C.O.P.S.' three other central stations to perform active load-sharing of the company's alarm traffic. Following in the footsteps of its Arizona central, the new center will be UL-listed and will operate 24/7/365.

“I am excited about the Tennessee central station. It's the next step in our commitment to service reliability and regional presence,” said C.O.P.S. COO Jim McMullen in a statement. “Not only will our new facility increase our reliability from a technical standpoint, it also broadens our staffing capabilities and helps to maintain quality of service in the event that local conditions prevent dispatchers from staffing our other centers.”

Smith said redundancy and local-level service were the driving factors behind C.O.P.S.' decision to expand.

“From a purely economical standpoint, operating one large central station is the best choice. From a balanced economic and reliability perspective, operating two hot-redundant central stations makes sense,” Smith said. “However, we monitor more than 3,000 dealers representing 500,000 customers—and we want to maintain a 'hometown' level of service that is supported by leading-edge technology. We believe operating more regional-based facilities is the best way to do that.”