Michael Wolf

The cable industry is getting more excited about the smart home, but they still have to justify managed services to the mainstream.

The classic do-it-yourself market is getting crowded.

Time Warner just announced its best quarter ever with 13,000 new adds, iControl keeps adding new partners, and AT&T has been dumping tons of money into advertising its Digital Life offering. So what’s different today from a decade ago when cable and telecommunications companies first started offering security services?

• The technology has matured. The arrival of platforms like iControl to manage security and smart home services from the cloud have lowered the cost of support and given cable companies a turnkey way to weave smart home services into their existing install and management infrastructure.
• Perhaps more important, consumers seem to want these services, in part because they now have mobile devices like iPhones and iPads that can act as a universal control point.