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AT&T activates home automation

By ITWeb
Johannesburg, 16 May 2012

AT&T activates home automation

AT&T Mobility brought to life the concept behind its new Digital Life home automation and security service at a stately New Orleans Garden District home, Fierce Wireless states.

Members of the media were treated to a tour of a New Orleans house where demonstrations of how various home appliances, window shades, table lamps, door locks, security cameras and even coffee pots can be outfitted with wireless sensors and then controlled via an app on the homeowners' iPad or smartphone.

PC World says home automation is a departure from AT&T's core products and services, but the Digital Life service, says Ainsley M Sadio, assistant VP for AT&T Digital Life, is a complement to the company's existing service offerings.

“Customers are ready,” Sadio says. Driving that readiness, Sadio believes, is AT&T's growing wireless infrastructure coupled with the proliferation of smartphones and tablets that give easy access to home automation controls.

Digital Life will allow customers to monitor their homes from afar digitally, as well as do such things as raise and lower the temperature or unlock doors, Brand Channel writes.

"When you're a company like AT&T ... you look at opportunities that are billion-dollar opportunities," said Glenn Lurie, the AT&T executive in charge of the project.

Lurie notes that only 20% of US homes have security systems, so there is a lot of upside to getting involved in the market.

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