AT&T’s Digital Life went to “great lengths” and...
AT&T’s Digital Life went to “great lengths” and “great expense” to protect its cloud-based service, said Senior Vice President Kevin Petersen at the Parks Associates Connections conference being held in Las Vegas in conjunction with CTIA. He cited an environment…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
rife with hacking scenarios and said when it comes to consumer security, “You can’t have them.” Digital Life won’t “jeopardize the AT&T brand because of a rogue incident,” Petersen said in response to a question about what the company has done to secure the service. He cited a security group within the telco that “plays war games on the system” and has been “attacking it for the last year” prior to the start of Digital Life’s home monitoring and automation system late last month. Digital Life makes adjustments where necessary, “but we would not have rolled it [out] if our war games guys wouldn’t have said, ‘You're good to go,'” Petersen said. AT&T has an “aggressive roadmap” for Digital Life, but it will be careful in how it moves forward to expand the service, Petersen said. Letting devices come in from outside the Digital Life ecosystem jeopardizes the “predictable, reliable, consistent experience” the company is promising, he said. “It’s an open platform. It’s just open on our terms today,” he said. “This isn’t a free-for-all. I take the security aspect of this very seriously.” Once security is ensured, he said, “we can certify and move through devices and solutions very quickly.” AT&T also said Monday it’s expanding Digital Life to seven more markets. Digital Life started in April in 15 markets (CD April 29 p9), with plans for a 50-market footprint by year-end. It didn’t take long for AT&T to plan its first cross-promotion for Digital Life, which will be announced Friday, Petersen said. Consumers who sign up for a Digital Life package will get $100 off a smartphone or tablet bought at an AT&T Wireless store, he said. “That will have a big effect out of the gate” on driving sales for other AT&T business, he said. “It’s step one of integration” across AT&T products, he said. The biggest challenge to the Digital Life launch so far, Petersen said, is logistics. The company is “bringing a lot of pieces together,” he said, citing the physical aspect of rolling out to new markets.