Telecom carriers too slow in home automation

The home network may be the next frontier for telecom service providers, but one major home automation company is seeing interest without action when it comes to deploying new technology. Control4, a Utah-based company that makes both control software and hardware devices for home automation and has shipped more than one million Zigbee-enabled products, has spoken with telecom service providers but not yet tied down a deal, according to Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder Eric Smith.

As a result, the sale of home automation gear to control digital media but also energy consumption, lights, home networks, appliances, security systems and more tends to come through the audio-visual channels, beginning with home theaters, Smith said.

“We talk to most of the big players, on the cable TV side and telecom,” Smith said. “We are not in any huge discussions right now, although we did go way down the road with AT&T.  Everyone is looking – there’s not a single trade show they don’t show up in our booth. We just haven’t seen anyone ready to make the leap.”

Control4 was founded by home automation and WiFi veterans who previously founded and ran companies such as Phast, a high-end home automation company later sold to AMX, and STSN, which became Ibahn, the broadband services company offering WiFi in hotels. Based on that previous experience, Smith said, Control4 executives knew they had to solve two major problems: The high cost of home automation equipment and programming and the need to make a retrofittable system that could go into any home.

“We founded Control4 to solve those two problems – make the stuff more affordable and make it retrofittable, to go into existing homes,” he said.

Today, Control4’s gear is sold in retail outlets, by some 1600 independent dealers, many of whom initially provide home theaters, Smith said. “That was a wake-up call to me,” he said. “Home automation is being sold as an adjunct to home theaters. The AV channel is the primary one for home automation.”

The other major shift for Control4 was away from WiFi, where the company found issues with power consumption, configuration challenges and reach, leading to the choice of Zigbee as its in-home wireless technology. Last week, Control4 announced that it will now also support Z-wave devices with its home automation control software. Zigbee and Z-wave are competing in-home wireless technologies.

“Z-wave is another protocol for us – we support many protocols,” Smith said. “There are products being made for Z-wave, and we want to be able to include it in what we support. Our goal is to make everything talk to each other and give the consumer choices. But we see Zigbee as a more of an open standard, and our products will continue to be based on Zigbee.”

Control4 prefers the software side of the business, where it has developed drivers for thousands of devices, but got into the device manufacturing business by necessity, Smith said, building its own thermostats, remote controls, light switches and more. Control4 is now selling its software to two other manufacturers and saw three new products based on its software introduced at the recent CEDIA trade show for designers and installers of home theater systems.

The best possibilities for going well beyond home theater with home automation are now focused in a couple of areas: energy management and healthcare, Smith said. Control4’s system is capable of making it much easier for consumers to control energy costs by intelligent management of appliances, HVAC systems and lights, Smith said.

“Many people have security systems that they arm as they are leaving the house,” he said. “What if, as you arm your security system, the home automation system automatically turns off lights and lowers the heat or air conditioning?”

Rising energy costs may become a driving force for home automation as consumers and utility companies look for ways to cut power consumption and therefore the need for new power plants or additional wholesale power purchases, Smith said. The Control4 system can be programmed to run air-conditioning or appliances during off-peak hours, to reduce power usage when rates go up, to eliminate “phantom” power consumption by appliances when they are not in use and even to recommend replacement of inefficient appliances.

Utility companies are increasingly looking into whether they could subsidize the initial distribution of such systems, Smith said. In Texas, Bluebonnet Electric, an energy cooperative, chose Connect4 for its effort to integrate smart grid technology into its customers’ homes. Another firm, CloseBy Networks, is using home automation sensors to develop elder care offerings that alert family members when seniors living on their own may not be moving around as expected or taking medicine as needed.

“This is an area where telecom providers could also be involved – they could be the ones providing this capability to the consumer,” Smith said. “It could be any innovative carrier who decides they want to be the service provider in the home, offering a green package.”