​In this update, we’ll cover recent improvements to our services, share a few market updates, and highlight some changes resulting from the latest Apple and Android phone updates.

Over the summer, we made a number of enhancements and introduced several new features across our products and services. We’ll explore these in more detail over the coming newsletters, but here’s a quick preview of just a few of them:

• New AFAM AlarmTech App – Faster message delivery and new controls that let you customise which alerts and notifications you receive
• Floorplan & Detector Enhancements – Service agents can now access individual detector history, along with improved IoT message decoding for Ampac, Bensan, and Pertronic panels. We’ll cover this in more detail next time
• Property Portfolio Portal Updates – Improvements to mapping, test and state history displays, and floorplan views
• Subscribe Function – Now simpler to use on mobile, making it easier to subscribe to all site messages during surveys or inspections
• PFA State History & Test Exports – Streamlined export functionality for a more intuitive experience

​We understand that one of our competitors has recently advised customers of another price increase, the second in the past 18 months. In some cases, this latest increase is up to 10%.

If you or your customers have received a price increase notice, we’d be happy to provide a comparative quote. We think you’ll be pleasantly surprised, not just by the price, but by the level of service you could be receiving.

As a reminder, transferring a customer from one of our two competitors to us is a simple, painless process and something that we do multiple times a week, often daily. 

When we transfer a customer AFAM:

• Supplies all required monitoring equipment, at no cost to the customer
• Organises, and pays for the installation of the monitoring equipment, at no cost to the customer
• Coordinates directly with FENZ and the incumbent monitoring provider, at no cost to the customer
• Organises the incumbents monitoring hardware to be returned to them, at no cost to the customer

If you or your customers are considering a switch, get in touch and we’ll take care of the rest.

We’ve just released the first in a new series of short form videos. The first video covers fire alarm monitoring and how it fits in and was filmed in a Wellington café during a recent customer visit. 

Watch it here: What does AFAM do? or by clicking on the image below.

We’ve received reports that some customers and technicians are not receiving AFAM SMS alerts following recent Android and Apple updates.

These updates can cause messages containing links to be filtered or blocked:

• Android devices – Messages may be marked as spam and moved to the Spam & Blocked folder. In some cases, the sending number may also be blocked.
• Apple devices – Messages from unknown numbers may be filtered into the Unknown Senders list, meaning no notification is triggered.

The fix is simple: save our SMS node numbers in your phone contacts. This ensures messages are delivered normally.

You can add the numbers manually, or contact our support team and we’ll send you a contact card for easy setup.

​In our next newsletter blog post, we’ll take a closer look at the new detector history features for service agents, walk through updates to the AFAM AlarmTech App, and share more general news and updates.

Click on the image above, or here, to view a short video we made in Wellington recently one where AFAM fits in the fire protection landscape.

​This is our first newsletter of the year, following the weekly series we ran in the final quarter of last year. In December we asked for feedback on what you’d like to see in these updates, and we’ve taken that feedback on board. Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts.

One change this year is that the newsletter will now be fortnightly rather than weekly, and will generally be sent on Fridays. If reading that caused a moment of panic, don’t worry — it’s only Thursday today! We do have something happening tomorrow that’s quite significant, which is why this newsletter is going out a day early. We’ll tell you more about that in a couple of weeks.

​As mentioned late last year, we’ve now opened an office in Auckland, located at the southern end of Ellerslie at 666 Great South Road. We’ve also welcomed Anastasia Nicklin as our Business Development Manager, responsible for the Northern Region and several of our key accounts.

If you’re based in Auckland, Hamilton, or the wider Northern Region and haven’t yet met Anastasia, please feel free to reach out. She’d be more than happy to meet for a coffee, discuss anything fire monitoring related, talk about how we can support you, and demonstrate some of our recent developments — including the AFAM Property Portfolio Portal.

​We’ve recently received the first prototype of our newly redesigned CTU, and we’re extremely pleased with how it’s shaping up.

While it’s still an early prototype and further development is required, it already includes a number of new features. As outlined in last year’s newsletters, these improvements will open up the ability to offer additional services and help fire alarm technicians do their best work.

We’ll keep you updated as the project progresses.

We received some great feedback on the installation videos we produced last year, so we’ve decided to expand on that with a short series of interview-style videos covering a range of topics.

The first few will be aimed at property owners and managers, explaining what fire alarm monitoring is and where it fits within building compliance. We’ll then produce additional videos for fire alarm service agents.

If there are topics you’d like us to cover, let us know — we’d be happy to consider them for the series.

After a couple of quieter weeks in January, things quickly ramped up. The phones started ringing and the workload increased dramatically — and it hasn’t slowed since. From the conversations we’re having, it seems many others in the industry are seeing the same trend.

With the amount of change happening across the industry at the moment, it looks like 2026 is going to be both busy and interesting.

On that note, if you have customers who may benefit from transitioning their monitoring from JCA or Alarm NZ to us, please let us know. All we need is the customer’s contact details and we’ll handle the rest. From the customer’s perspective, the transition won’t cost them anything in terms of time or money, in fact in most cases they’ll save money.

If you’re unsure how switching monitoring providers works or what’s involved, just get in touch and we’ll be happy to explain.

​In our next newsletter we’ll take a closer look at the improvements we’ve made across our products and services since last year’s newsletter series. There have been a lot of developments — all designed to benefit both building owners and service agents.