After the successful golf outing last year, the New England Chapter of the SFPE will be continuing the new tradition with the second annual A.L. Brown Scholarship Golf Outing on Friday, September 10th at Cyprian Keyes Golf Club in Boylston, MA! All proceeds from this event will go to the A.L. Brown Scholarship, which is awarded annually to New England students working on a bachelor or graduate degree in an engineering discipline with an interest in pursuing a career in fire protection engineering. Last year, the tournament raised $3,600 for the scholarship fund.

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(Excerpt from March 1, 2010 posting on SDM by Joan Engebretson. Click for the full article)

There is no mention of the alarm industry in a December 21, 2009 proposal from AT&T asking the Federal Communications Commission to allow telephone companies to phase out the traditional telephone network, instead relying on their broadband data networks to deliver voice over Internet protocol (VOIP). But if accepted, and depending on how it is enacted, AT&T’s proposal could have a dramatic — some say unacceptable — impact on the alarm industry.

“While broadband usage — and the importance of broadband to Americans’ lives — is growing every day, the business model for legacy phone services is in a death spiral,” AT&T wrote in its proposal. AT&ampT noted that more than 25 percent of households have given up traditional phone service (known as POTS for “plain old telephone service”) in favor of wireless or VOIP. “The high costs associated with the maintenance and operation of the legacy network are diverting valuable resources that could be used to expand broadband access and to improve the quality of broadband service,” AT&T said.

Read the rest of the story on the SDM web site