Telstra joins the smart-home bandwagon

Article

Telstra Is Launching A Smart Homes Monitoring System | Lifehacker Australia

Telstra Has A Smart Home Monitoring System Coming Later This Year | Gizmodo

From the horse’s mouth

Telstra

Press Release

My Comments

What can a telco, pay-TV provider or ISP do when they face competition in the Internet-service, pay-TV, mobile communications or similar markets? Some of them have looked towards contributing to the smart-home market, whether offering their own service or rebranding a service offered by a specialist company under their own label.

Telstra is the latest to engage in this practice by offering a subscription smart-home service. Here, they will offer a “Watch and Monitor” security-focused service and an “Automation and Energy” home-automation service. This will be about ideas like knowing things like if a particular person has come home or whether that door that is meant to be locked is locked or whether that appliance like the iron is on or off. It can also be about having the heating turned down when no-one is up and around.

The hardware links to your home network and the Internet via Wi-Fi but most likely may use the Zigbee technology as the “low-power” wireless backbone. Each system will have a “Smart Home Hub” which links all the devices together and to the Internet and you will find that an iOS or Android mobile-platform app or a Web-based user interface will be the main control surface.

The Wi-Fi link also serves an indoor network camera and an outdoor network camera, both of which are HD-capable. There is a smart-thermostat kit which will link to your home’s heating and cooling system which may apply to those of us who use a central heating or cooling system of some sort. Telstra are also offering the Lockwood smart deadbolt which is like the Yale Real Living Connected Deadbolt that comes from ASSA Abloy. There are also the Sengled Element LED touch smart lights which are intended as replacements for most light-bulb setups along with a smart power plug that monitors current being used along with the ability to turn the appliance on or off.

Other sensors include a window sensor, a door sensor which is a magnet-reed contact sensor and a wide-beam PIR sensor that can be set up for “pet-alley” mode with all these devices talking to the Smart Hub wirelessly most likely via Zigbee technology.

Of course, like a lot of these home-automation systems, it will be a self-install package but Telstra may point you towards specialists who can help you with installation and setup requirements.

The system, which will be offered to customers irrespective of whether they maintain a Telstra communications service or not, is intended to be launched later this year.

Personally, I would like to see Telstra offer the subscription-based service as part of a cost-effective “multiple-play” telecommunications + entertainment service for those customers who value the idea of having “many eggs in one basket” by concentrating their business with one provider.

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