Smart Homes: Coming to a Town Near You
“Smart homes” are coming to a neighborhood near you, providing cable providers with a new lease on life.
Could your cable provider be your next home security provider? The convergence of expanding technological capabilities, lower prices, energy conservation and an increasing demand for the convenience are providing companies like Comcast with a great growth opportunity.
The idea of being able to close a garage door when away from home, receive a tweet from the refrigerator that the milk has gone sour, or control lights for security reasons is appealing to many consumers. This demand and wireless technological innovations are making the “smart home” a more affordable option, heralding a wave of companies rushing to cash in on the opportunity.
This trend comes when cable companies are experiencing huge headaches, watching traditional revenue streams dry up in this age of new media as viewers drop cable and flee to online entertainment alternatives.
As a result, these companies are eyeing the home monitoring business, already an $8-10 billion-a-year industry, and the moves they make regarding future features and systems have the potential to transform the American home, stave off their own extinction and revolutionize society.
Comcast’s Test Run
Comcast is launching a marketing blitz this month to sign up customers in Maryland for “Xfinity Home” package, complete with a residential alarm system, video monitoring, and temperature controls, among other features. This super-smart home will be controlled from a touchpad, mobile device or computer.
Comcast, like other cable companies, has an established relationship with millions of customers and views that existing partnership and the smart home trend as a chance to expand its growth. And unlike years ago, when a fully connected home would cost thousands of dollars to configure and monitor, today companies are able to come closer to the $50 monthly “sweet spot.”
For example, Comcast’s Xfinity Home package is $40 a month, after a $199 installation fee. The Home subscription service is only available to Comcast broadband Internet customers.
At the moment, Xfinity Home consists of a touchpad that can operate an alarm system, thermostat, lighting and cameras, with access as well to weather, news and sports reports. Users can also plug gadgets, such as a coffee pot or lamp, into a wireless adapter that enables remote control. The ability to access e-mail, listen to voicemail and control DVRs through the home system are coming soon.
More Affordable Prices
As Comcast’s test program underscores, new advances that lower prices and expand adoption are pushing the envelope and bringing the “idea” of a smart home closer to reality.
The costs of hardware, like Internet-connected video cameras, are down. Also, consumers are adopting smartphones in bigger numbers, especially in the U.S. These forces are creating a population that is increasingly accustomed to using applications to manage their lives at the same time Internet broadband expansion is racing at break-neck speed and wireless connectivity is seemingly everywhere.
As a result, companies with an existing relationship in providing Internet and home services — like Comcast, other cable providers, and even wireless carriers, smartphone companies, and utility providers — are in a powerful place to secure a spot in the new smart home market.
Americans Take a New Look at Home Security
The idea of the smart home lays the groundwork to expand the current 20 percent of U.S. home-owners who pay for monthly professional monitoring, according to Strategy Analytics, opening up home-security options.
According to Strategy Analytics, last year, 800,000 American homes were smart homes, a number that is predicted to swell to 11 million by 2017, fueled in part by networks that promise to coordinate home media, utilities, appliances, windows and doors. Also, new touch-sensitive technology could turn everyday objects into touchscreens, adding to the coming home goods revolution.
These innovations will accessorize highly intelligent houses with automated lights, home entertainment systems, refrigerators and even Wi-Fi enabled pavements, all high-end functions that will need some high-tech security.
Tech companies like Google and home goods retailers like Lowes are developing smart home systems to make appliances and devices work better. These smart home technologies can incorporate Wi-Fi into the way appliances like dishwashers, TVs and stoves operate, making secure network connections even more crucial to domestic life.
One development that underscores this movement toward Wi-Fi and home security is here to stay is news that French researchers developed Metapaper, which blocks Wi-Fi signals from escaping the home, ramping up security for the same price as traditional wallpaper. The paper, which still allows TV and radio waves to pass through, will hit the market next year, distributed by Finnish company Alstrom.
As different parts of homes rely more on network connections to run expensive appliances and gadgets, products like Metapaper offer home protection, and keep the increasingly important Wi-Fi connection secure.
Conservation: Conscience With Convenience
In addition to securely controlling energy use in the house, a smart home system can also help cut excess use by monitoring the network’s efficiency.
This month, Honda revealed a test smart home system to monitor and control energy usage.
The Honda Smart Home System consists of thin-film solar cell panels, a rechargeable home battery unit, gas and hot water supply systems and a sort of e-manager to keep track of all the other components as well as monitor the power grid. The car maker hopes to use the house in Saitama, Japan that was designed to reduce CO2 emissions by 50 percent for extensive demo testing, which is timely considering the popularity of home conservation efforts around the globe.
In the U.K., the AlertMe smart home technology company secured a contract to offer a “Personalized Energy Efficiency Advice Service” to about 10,000 British Gas customers who have new smart meters. British Gas is the U.K.’s largest supplier of domestic energy serving 10 million homes and 15.9 million energy accounts.
The partnership will take data from smart meters with the promise it will be translated into personalized insights about energy consumption for customers, for insight and to possibly saving them on energy bills. For the first time customers will receive a breakdown of their energy use, information on how they compare to other similar households, and relevant recommendations on how to save energy and reduce bills.
Smart Homes Coming Sooner Than Later
For a variety of reasons — from people who love the latest gadgets to those who want to trim their electric bills — the smart home is coming to a neighborhood near you, and to many it won’t be a surprise.
Comcast surveyed its U.S. customers a year and a half ago and found 42 percent were aware of the smart home concept. Recently, the cable provider pegged the figure at 78 percent, indicating we’re collectively speeding toward a future where almost everything in our homes is automated and controlled by gesture or speech, and the question isn’t so much “if,” as it is “how.”
One thing that is less certain is what companies — cable providers, technology titans, wireless carriers, new startups or some combination — will swoop down on the trend and securely harness smart home technologies to create the best system, shooting that company to the top of this growing field.