Big cable taking long view on smart home services

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.