The Brinks man came this morning since we have a Brinks system preinstalled in our home. Unfortunately, they install everything except the power supply so it's just been sitting there doing nothing for the 2 months since we moved in. The man had told me on the telephone that we'd be able to turn the system on before he left, but when he arrived it became clear to me that nothing of the sort would be true. He brought in his sales binder and gave us a 20 minute printout of a powerpoint presentation about the history of Brinks, its customers, and some details of its monitoring facility in which I had no interest. After all this, I told him I had "just one question"--"can my system be monitored if I don't have a telephone line form the local telephone company?" We have our phone service through Vonage which comes over our internet connection. This question derailed the rest of the discussion. I also learned that the monitoring would cost $30+ per month, which was far higher than I was already prepared not to pay--a no brainer in my opinion. Hopefully the technician will be out later this week to bring an AC/DC converter so we can actually turn it on and have it make loud noises.