The broadcaster of 30 Rock and Days of Our Lives is now offering home security. Just since last October, Xfinity from Comcast, which also owns NBC Universal, rolled out home security and monitoring; ADT, the world’s biggest home security firm, introduced a multi-level lifestyle monitoring and control service; Verizon, one of the largest U.S. communications companies, with a recent iPhone deal and a cloud computing acquisition in hand, has its own home monitoring experiment in motion; APX Alarm Security Solutions Inc., Provo, Utah, the fifth-largest alarm monitoring company on the SDM 100, rebranded as Vivint™ and launched new products turning its focus from alarm monitoring to a focus on whole home automation and monitoring (see page 149 for more on APX’s rebrand as Vivint™). And that’s not an all-inclusive list.
It’s easy to see what’s going on. Broadband providers see home monitoring, which may or may not include security, as a valuable addition to their bundle of television, Internet, wired and wireless services. Leading alarm monitoring companies are seeing the whole home (automation and monitoring), as a valuable extension of their traditional alarm and fire monitoring. To varying degrees, homeowners see value in monitoring of energy use, video cameras inside and around the home, and accessing and controlling their system from a smartphone or laptop from anywhere through an interactive Web connection.