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30 residential systems www.securitysystemsnews.com august 2013 GuardMe expands to North Carolina By Tess Nacelewicz OLD BRIDGE, N.J.—After recent expansions into the Midwest and Maine, GuardMe Security, based here, in June added North Carolina to the growing list of states where it is offering home security/ home automation. "The housing market in North Carolina is starting to improve … and it's an excellent market in general for security," said GuardMe President Craig Metzger. "It's densely populated and has a fair amount of crime." GuardMe, an 80-employee company founded in 1997, describes itself as "a leading pro- vider of home automation solutions in New Jersey." It also provides security to commercial and industrial clients. Outside of New of Jersey, it operates in Delaware and Pennsylvania, and in April it began providing home security/home automation in Indiana. In May, it expanded to Ohio and then to Maine. GuardMe announced June 19 that it has expanded to North Carolina. Metzger said that the company has opened an office in Mooresville, N.C., which is a suburb of Charlotte, but it offers services throughout the state. SSN security systems news comcast Continued from page 28 broad a set of customers as we can," he said. "We want to meet consumers where they want to meet us. If they want security, great, we'll sell them one of our Secure products as our full smart home. But if security isn't the most important thing to them, we now have a great product that's tailored to their needs." Xfnity Home Control starts at $9.95 per month, while Xfinity Home Secure starts at $39.95 per month. Both products come under the umbrella of Comcast's Xfnity Home security/home automation offering, which Comcast launched in 2010. Bowling noted that the penetration rate for home security has been stuck at about 20 percent for years, which he said indicates "there are a lot of people who aren't interested in just home security." He also said that two-thirds of current Xfnity Home customers had never had a security system before. "They had been traditionally marketed to many times I'm sure by security companies, but didn't feel that was a product they needed," Bowling said. However, he said, "when we brought them a product, that while it had security, also had thermostat control to save you money, lighting control for convenience or to save money or both, video monitoring, a way to access that system and interact with it from anywhere in the world as long as you have a smart device and connectivity—that is appealing to a broader set of people." Now Comcast wants to further appeal to those customers, Bowling said. "All we're doing is taking that idea one step further and saying, … '[We can attract] an even broader set [of customers] if we also have services that are just home control.'" SSN asg Continued from page 28 The other two deals were account acquisitions, one in Texas and the other in Louisiana. Those deals only account for about a quarter of the total RMR the super-regional added in the second quarter of this year, Masino said. "Seventy-six percent [of new Q2 RMR] came through organic channels," Masino said. As of the end of June, ASG had $8.3 million in total RMR; Masino is projecting ASG will have $8.9 million in RMR by end of the year. SSN