Source: Lyle Moran, lowellsun.com, August 13, 2012

The city is considering having the wireless radio fire-alarm system it had installed at a cost of $77,849 in 2009 reprogrammed so that some of the signals the new radio boxes send to the city’s 911 Communications Center are diverted elsewhere.

A request for proposals, or RFP, issued by the city in recent months seeks a company that will change the alarm system to send nonfire signals sent by the boxes instead to a private, central-station monitoring company.

Currently, both fire signals and nonfire signals sent by the radio boxes, including 68 municipal boxes, are sent to the city’s dispatch center in the Police Department headquarters downtown. A separate RFP put out by the city calls for a company to monitor the signals that would be sent to the central station until mid-2015.