Imagine a near future when a single touch on your tablet or
smartphone will start your coffee maker, lock your doors, turn on (or
off) the lights and open a window.
Or maybe you'd use the
same gadget to answer the doorbell and talk to a visitor, even if you're
half a world away. Or maybe you'd get an e-mail telling you when the
kids are home from school.
Oh, and the the same
connectivity will also power a home-security system that, in effect,
gives your doors, windows and most anything else in your house an
Internet address so you can monitor and control them digitally.
AT&T says all that and more is on the way next year. Called "Digital Life,"
the system is the telecommunications giant's entree into the world of
home security, an industry the company says was ripe for some serious
innovation.
Digital Life will use
sensors that assign individual Internet protocol, or IP, addresses to
everything from a window to a refrigerator to, yes, a coffeemaker. Once
linked up, they can then be controlled remotely by Apple, Android,
BlackBerry and Windows devices.
The company says anything
from a GPS device to a medicine bottle can be linked in to the system,
which could have implications in fields ranging from fitness to
independent living.
Battle for tablet supremacy
AT&T will be running
some trials this summer in Atlanta and Dallas, and say subscriptions to
the home-automation service will be available by the end of next year.
No prices have been announced, although AT&T says they will be
"extremely competitive."
Glenn Lurie, AT&T's
president of Emerging Enterprises and Partnerships, sat down with CNN
Tech recently in Atlanta to answer questions about the system, which he
calls "disruptive" and a quantum leap that competitors in both the
security and wireless industries will be hard-pressed to match.
Here's a condensed version of our conversation:
On why a company known for wireless service entered the home-security market:
This is a business
that's very fragmented. It's a business where the biggest player has 6
million subscriptions. Nobody in that business has an all-IP network.
When we launched Uverse, which is now obviously very successful, people
said, "Wait a minute -- AT&T in the TV business? What are they
doing?"
We look for industries
that are disruptable. This happened to be one. This is one that's kind
of ripe for someone to come in and really move it forward. We also look
for industries that have old technology, that were just kind of sitting
back and living off of old technology and this was one of those as well.
On preset 'programs' the system will run
When you get up in the
morning and leave your home, what do you do? In my house, you get up, we
make sure the doors are locked, that the kids didn't leave one open.
You turn the alarm on. You turn a certain light on or off. You do all
that, then you go and leave.
Well, that's a thing of
the past. Now ... you would go on your phone as you're walking into the
garage, driving away, and you would tap your program button, which
you've already told your house what you want it to do. "I want the doors
locked. Make sure they're locked. I want all the garages closed. Make
sure they're closed. I want the alarm put on. I want this light turned
on. I want the thermostat turned down."
It allows you to control
your life, but you sit down and do it once and you're done. To me, that
is the next level of that foundation. That is just totally cool.
On 'alerts'
When you think about
alerts, you think about a sensor under your water heater that tells you
to turn it off. It senses your water is being used at a greater rate
than it should. Or if a window is broken. You really don't need to know
if you don't have milk. [A time-honored prediction for home-automation
services]. That's a silly scenario.
But the scenario here
is, since all those refrigerators are basically computers, it senses
your ice maker is about to break and asks you if you want it to make an
appointment for you. Those kinds of things are futuristic, but very
simple to do.
Other examples
In the future world when
the doorbell rings, [Lurie's teen daughter] is going to grab her tablet
and answer the door. There's going to be a camera with a microphone
outside and she can see who's there. If it's somebody who says "I'm here
to fix something," you can see ID. She can decide if she's going to
open the door or not.
The same thing goes when
I'm in Barcelona next year. If somebody comes to the door, I can answer
my door from anywhere in the world because it's all IP. Those kind of
scenarios are really exciting to us.
Wouldn't you want to
know when you're at work that the door opened? You can ... program it to
take a picture of what just came through the door and send a text to
your phone. Now you know that, at 3:51, your kid is home. You haven't
bugged them. You haven't told them to call you. You just know.
'Limitless' possibilities
The beauty of our system
is we can put what I'll call the "Digital Life secret sauce" into any
device. I'm going to put out a (software developers kit) and I'm going
to allow every (manufacturer) on the planet to build and certify their
devices on our system, so when you walk into Best Buy in the future and
you decide you want to add a camera, you don't even have to call us.
You can get into some
really crazy stuff. You can get into sensors outside in your backyard --
dirt and moisture sensors for farmers. This platform is so expandable.
... There isn't anything that's mobile and has current running through
it that we're not going to try to connect.
Range of services that will be offered
We're going to try to
launch a product that's ... [aimed at] the whole market. Somebody who
wants to mack-daddy their house out, they can have a lot of fun.
Somebody that wants just a simple alarm system ... no problem. We can do
that as well. With all IP, it's cheaper.
No comments:
Post a Comment