President Todd Santiago and co-founder Lance Dean say the company is moving forward and with the appointment earlier this year of Patrick Soo as the company’s Canadian Manufacturer’s Representative, 2gig is gaining ground on this side of the border as well.

Lance Dean had worked for Honeywell, running national accounts for over 10 years. Co-founder Scott Simon had also worked for Honeywell for 18 years and in 2007 they decided to develop a new product for the industry.

“It took us about 18 months to launch the product and get it ready for market,” says Dean. “Then last April at the ISC show we launched 2gig to the industry. We weren’t in a booth or on the show floor; we did it with private meetings and it was really successful because we got to pick and choose the dealers we wanted to work with.”

Since last April 2gig has been approved by almost all the dealer programs in the United States and it sold over 200,000 panels in that first year. This month at ISC West in Las Vegas they had a booth on the show floor; it was the first time dealers could see 2gig without having a pre-arranged private meeting.

“That’s why it was such a zoo at our booth,” says Dean.

Dean and Santiago say the market was right for a new entry in the security market because consumer technology devices were dominating how users manage most aspects of their electronic lives.

“There hadn’t really been much innovation for the last few years in security. Everyone had the same keypads with the same little buttons. Today, everybody is moving to iPads and iPhones and apps and our industry was left behind,” says Dean. “Our goal was to come up with a cool product with more features like a smart phone to add new apps and applications.”

The other idea they had was that home automation was about to explode in the mass market.

“Before, it was very costly to do home automation. Homeowners and small businesses love home automation, they just don’t want to spend thousands of dollars to do it. We were the first to bring a self-contained product with a colour touchscreen with a Z-wave home automation package. It was never done before and we now combine that with the GSM radio because phone lines are going away. It hits the market at the right time when people are looking to do more than just security.”

Also at ISC West competitor ADT announced its ADT Pulse service was launching in Canada. Dean says 2gig’s competitors, which may also include Rogers Communications this summer, didn’t have “first mover advantage.”

“Alarm.com has really made the interactive services popular. They’re the first and the largest. ADT is coming on the back of what Alarm.com is doing so I think they’re trying to catch. They realize we’ve landed the big customers,” says Dean.

When it comes to cost, Dean says dealers are selling 2gig packages for between $99 or $399 for all the functionality and a monthly fee.

“We have some dealers doing it for $99 down,” says Dean. “The unique thing about our product is that if the sales team presents the product well some dealers are getting $800 down and more per month. We’re trying to get the guys who were getting zero down and $35 a month to go from zero down to $300 down and $40 or $49 a month,” he says.

In Canada Patrick Soo says 2gig is getting a lot of traction.

“The touch screen is more intuitive from the programming and installation side – once a technician has installed it, they’ve got it. We also have a smash and crash feature – so even if someone does try to take it off the wall we do get the alarm. Coming up in Q3 we will have French over the air capability. Today we’re installing English panels in Quebec but in Q3 we will be able to do an over-the-air update and the next day customers will have a French GUI and French programming,” says Soo.