Industry Touts the Benefits of Smart Home, But Appeal to Consumers Not Yet Clear

The connected home is beginning to take off, driven by cable and phone operators in the U.S., but full rollout isn’t likely until around 2020, said GreenPeak Technologies CEO Cees Links. The company makes semiconductor chips. ZigBee is “the” standard for the smart home, and most U.S. set-top boxes and gateways have it integrated for remote control and smart home apps, he said. The connected home market is huge, touting the millions of households already connected to the Internet, each with many connected devices.

Links said he expects smart homes to deploy in three phases. From 2012 to 2015, ZigBee-based set-top boxes with radio frequency remote control will provide a “Trojan horse” that puts the technology in homes without people knowing it. From 2013 to 2018, operators such as AT&T and Comcast will offer smart home apps for security, home care and energy management that can sense things and take action, he said. But that’s still application-by-application, so not really a smart home, he said. The real deal will take off in 2015-2020, when, for example, a home will have a motion sensor that can not only set off an alarm but can also turn on the lights and heat, creating an integrated environment that’s comfortable, safe and secure, he said. We're in the middle of phase two now, he said.

The connected home will be the starting point for driving costs down and connecting masses of devices to the Internet, said Links. The technology will then move to agriculture, the supply chain, retail and industry, all helped by the advent of the smart home, he said.

AlertMe comes at the connected home from the consumer perspective, said Communications Director Jody Haskayne. The company website says it works with consumer-facing businesses to make smart homes available. AlertMe believes the IoT has gone from technological shop-talk to real-life consumer adoption, she said. Users are currently connected to everything that matters except their home, she said. Another catalyst for consumer takeup is the energy market and smart metering, and a third is the use of smart technology in the telecom and retail areas, she said. Don’t reinvent the wheel, she said. Learn from other markets that have consumers already connected to the technology.

Just as with the Internet, consumers must be taken on a journey with key applications such as energy management and home monitoring, Haskayne said. Once they're interested, they can be enticed to the home automation and intelligence market, with apps for such things as security, safety, lighting and the garden, she said. Consumers will choose the applications relevant to them, she said.

There are policy considerations connected to the IoT, particularly the connected home, said Vodafone Group Head of Enterprise Regulation Robert MacDougall. The company wants to ensure that users have privacy and that Vodafone engenders trust and confidence, he said. A recent European Commission IoT review identified several problems, including the speed and fragmentation of the market and that players have limited liability, he said. One major concern is that the IoT represents a “loss of control,” he said. Consumer protections such as privacy by design must be designed into the smart home to avoid data protection glitches, he said. Policymakers and regulators must create incentives for industry to address security issues and set penalties for getting it wrong, he said.

There probably won’t be just one winner in the smart home market, because telcos, retailers and energy providers are providing bundled services and some people want to install their own connectivity, Haskayne said. Telcos will lead, Links said. They already have the equipment in customers’ homes, and they're being pressured by Internet companies like YouTube, so they have an incentive to branch out, he said. It’s too early to pick a winner, said Qualcomm Senior Director-Government Relations Anne-Lise Thieblemont. One promising area from the consumer standpoint is medical and healthcare monitoring, she said.

Several audience members voiced concern about the privacy aspects of the smart home. The benefits of the technology should outweigh those risks, said Pierre Colle, Schneider Electric chief technology officer, residential control business. It’s a trade-off, he said, but providers must be transparent about their privacy practices. His company takes privacy seriously but the risks of privacy violations in smart energy meters is low, he said. The hundreds of devices in a house will need to be connected to each other but not necessarily to the cloud, said Thieblemont. The one area where regulation of the smart home market may need regulation is in the protection of consumer privacy, security and competition, said Haskayne. Any regulation must be flexible enough to keep up with the evolving technology, said MacDougall.

One attendee questioned the social value of the smart home. People used to say they didn’t need Wi-Fi and now they can’t imagine life without it, Links said. We're “doomed” to accept technology and work around its disadvantages, he said. The man in the street doesn’t grasp the IoT yet, so industry must offer apps that are useful, Haskayne said. The benefits of the connected home are comfort, efficiency and peace of mind, she said. The conference ends Tuesday.