CABLE OPERATORS SEEK SLICE OF LUCRATIVE SECURITY PIE

Cox, Comcast conduct trials of Security Broadband system

Always seeking ways to fill their broadband pipes, a bevy of North American cable providers have invested in security and communications systems provider Security Broadband, with two operators — Cox Communications and Comcast — expanding trials of the company's services.

Security Broadband uses cable's high-speed broadband network to deliver home security services with audio and visual monitoring, including online Internet access that lets consumers check on their properties. The company's other cable investors include Adelphia Communications, Cablevision Systems, Charter Communications, Rogers Communications and Shaw Communications.

Cox has entered a marketing phase after conducting a technical trial in Las Vegas last year. Comcast is taking a more basic approach in Sarasota, Fla. Both test sites fit Security Broadband's need for “an environment that has an upgraded plant and an installed base of cable modem users” because the service plugs into cable modems, said Anthony Moreno, Security Broadband's chief operating officer.

Despite its potential to be a next-gen broadband killer app, neither Cox nor Comcast describe Security Broadband's service as anything more than another offering for the broadband pipe. “We've put a lot of resources into creating a network capable of delivering a host of services for our customers,” said Jayson Juraska, Cox's vice president of business development. “This would be another element in the bundle of services.”

Cox's research has revealed that people like the service and are inclined to purchase it, Juraska said. Now Cox wants to collect some of the $6 billion Americans spend annually on home security services.

“About 20% of the homes in the country take a security service,” Juraska said. “If we can get a nice chunk of those folks to come over and sign up for this enhanced service, it makes a nice business.”

The system's broadband-based advanced features are expected to drive that movement. “Traditional security systems simply signal to a monitoring center by way of ‘dumb data,’” Moreno said. “With our system, the operators [that sit at a Security Broadband monitoring station in Florida] are hearing and seeing within the home.”

Subscribers can remotely view their premises via an Internet connection to a password-protected Web site. Comcast hopes this capability will attract the snowbird denizens of the North who “have very nice residential homes down here,” said Larry Schweber, director of marketing for Comcast's Southern Division.

Because the system works with cable modems and high-speed networks that have been criticized for widespread unreliability in the wake of the Excite@Home network meltdown, service uptime will be closely monitored during the trial.

“This product will be tested tremendously before we do any type of commercial deployment… to make sure that it's delivering what it promises to deliver and that the data is coming through clearly,” Schweber said.

A reliable system — with verifiable audio and video alarms — would trump existing security offerings that plague law enforcement officials with false alarms, Moreno said. And although Security Broadband is starting with cable modems, the system could work on DSL and broadband fixed wireless networks because it requires only 128 kb/s of bandwidth.

“We've been trying to provide a service that ultimately is an Internet Protocol-based system that can be deployed by a variety of high-speed infrastructures,” Moreno said.