Dante Monteverde Bio
President/CEO of Emergency 24, Inc.
Born in Chile in 1944, Dante immigrated to the United States at the age of 19. He joined the US Army, served in Korea, attained the rank of Sergeant and received an honorable discharge. After working for a short period as an alarm installer for a company called Chicago Fire and Burglary, Dante Monteverde founded Alarmtronics, Inc. in 1967. He later changed the corporate name to Emergency Twenty Four, Inc.
In the late 1960s, Dante Monteverde led a team of programmers and engineers in writing the first software program for alarm monitoring. Prior to that, it was a manual system with staff members “reading” receivers, retrieving account cards, hand-notating calls made, completing the disposition of the alarm process and filing the account and alarm cards.
In 1972, Alarmtronics ceased its local alarm installation activities and focused entirely on its third-party monitoring of customers’ alarm systems. He was able to take the company national when toll-free “800” phone lines were proliferated and Alarm Industry Trade Shows were inaugurated. Before toll-free “800” phone lines came into existence, it was impractical for companies and individuals to pay long distance rates for alarm service. Every day they would have had opening and closing or arming and disarming signals being charged high rates for transmission. With toll-free “800” phone lines, Dante could bundle the services and reduce the onerous toll charges. Trade Shows provided a venue for EMERgency24 to showcase the practicality of its business model for alarm dealers across the country.
Dante’s success with his business model changed the way the alarm industry evolved. His model enabled small companies that could not afford to operate and staff a 24-hour call center the opportunity to compete with large companies that did. Dante also developed a number of other Alarm Industry “firsts.” He was the first to develop interactive software to enable communications between the central station and his dealers’ operations. This enabled dealers to enter contracts and make changes to their accounts.
He was the first to establish a redundant central station operation when he opened a satellite office in the Washington D.C. area. He later opened other satellite offices in Southfield, MI. and Brea, CA. This strategy helps protect EM24 and its dealers from a catastrophic loss and increases EM24’s marketing presence. Dante developed the LifeCard Program to provide alarm dealers additional security services. His was the first central station operation to use the secure Internet as a primary means of data transfer and communications with its dealers and subscribers.
Security Sales and Integration Magazine named Dante Monteverde to its inaugural list as one of the 25 Most Dynamic People Who Shaped the Security Industry.