TORONTO – Rogers has completed the quintuple play after launching its new home monitoring and automation system Wednesday.
Called Smart Home Monitoring, the security and energy management service allows customers to automate and manage sensors, cameras, thermostats, lights and appliances from their computer or smart phone. Rogers Communications CEO Nadir Mohamed talked about the new service in a speech last fall, as Cartt.ca reported, but it and other large North American MSOs have been developing the service for a number of years. Rogers has been building towards Wednesday’s launch for nearly five years and began testing technology three years ago. Over 750 employees have been trialing the equipment and service in Toronto, Ottawa and the Golden Horseshoe, said Ian Pattinson, VP and GM of Rogers Smart Home Monitoring.
Those with some history in the industry will remember Rogers Canguard, the company’s former security business which was sold of in the 1990s. This system, of course, is far more sophisticated than that what Canguard was.
At the heart of the system is a touchpad (pictured below) that customers use to either arm/disarm and manage their system. Available in wall-mount or table-top, the touchpad provides access to home security functions, home automation apps for lighting, cameras and thermostats as well as multimedia apps for photos, traffic, weather and sports. When dormant, the rugged touch screens can become digital photo frames and can even play live audio from a dedicated 680News app (another Rogers division, of course).
When an alarm occurs, the Rogers central monitoring station (a dedicated Rogers division that will deal only with home monitoring) is alerted simultaneously over both Rogers’ cable and wireless networks while sending an email and text alert to the customer who can then decide what action to take. It also constantly communicates with its highly encrypted smart sensors throughout the home, checking their status, signal strength, battery level and room temperature.
Customers are also able to create all sorts of custom "rules" so that their monitoring system will tell them virtually anything, such as sending a photo via e-mail when a child comes home from school in the afternoons to whether or not you turned the coffee maker off to sending reminders to take out the garbage on garbage day.
Available now only to Rogers Hi-Speed Internet customers in its cable footprint across Ontario, the service has three rate plans which each include wireless-data backup, starting with the ‘Home Basics’ plan at $39.99 per month. The Touchpad starter kit is $149.00 on a three-year term, or $749 with no term, with optional sensors available a-la-carte and in discounted packages. All systems are installed for a one-time fee of $99.00.
"Consumers are looking for solutions to enable their connected home seamlessly, reliably and securely," said Pattinson. "With Smart Home Monitoring, we have reinvented home security with easy home automation and energy management providing Rogers customers with a truly connected home of the future."
