iControl leverages security to automate home

Wireline connections are being cut at an alarming rate, and broadband revenues are also tailing off, at least for telecom service providers. Short of becoming pure wireless operations, telecom service providers need to find new sources of revenue from new services.

A Palo Alto, Calif.,-based firm known as iControl is pitching the possibilities of selling home security over a broadband connection but promising it will lead to much more, including remote energy management, home healthcare and other home-automation opportunities. By focusing initially on what is currently an $8-billion market for home security, iControl intends to give its service provider partners an entry point into a much broader market that it calls home automation.

“The idea is to address the lack of perceived value of security services initially and expand that opportunity,” said Greg Roberts, vice president of marketing for iControl. “The system we deploy in the home becomes the Trojan horse for a much higher level of functionality for things we have today and will develop in the future.”

Today’s home security services, provided by ADT, Brinks and others, use dialup phone lines, not broadband connections, said Paul Dawes, CEO of iControl. His venture-backed firm wants to change that and deliver Web-based security services that give customers much more visibility into what is happening in their homes through a network of cameras, sensors and other devices. “Security services today are a cash cow,” Dawes said. “You install the hardware and then collect $35 to $40 a month, even if you do nothing more.”

Because iControl also is tying in mobile phones, initially the iPhone, company funding has come in part from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers iFund, established to back iPhone-related companies. But iControl’s ambitions go well beyond the iPhone. Initially, in the security space, the company wants to create what Dawes calls “a new category of content – glanceable content.”