Comcast to Turn Gateways Into Smart Home Hubs in 'Market-Moving' Expansion
Comcast is widening the reach of its home automation offering beyond Xfinity Home to its 15 million-plus Xfinity internet customers over the next 90 days, Xfinity Home Senior Vice President-General Manager Dan Herscovici told us Wednesday.
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“We are turning on home automation, at no additional cost, to almost 16 million households,” Herscovici said. Customers will be able to connect smart home devices, control them and set rules and scenes using an Xfinity app on a mobile device, the X1 voice-enabled TV remote or web interface, the executive said.
Comcast is upgrading the firmware on its wireless gateways to enable home automation, following a road map it previewed several years ago at industry events. Herscovici pitched Xfinity Home as an industry smart home platform at a Parks Associates conference keynote in 2015 (see 1605240058). Comcast gateways in the field are home automation-ready and will be enabled through software as the provider rolls out the service market by market over the next three months, Herscovici said.
The software update gives Comcast customers access to capability found in smart home hubs they can find at retail for $149 and up, some with service fees, Herscovici said. “We’re giving it away at no additional cost to your service,” he said. “It’s market-moving when you talk about the scale at which Comcast can do this,” Herscovici said. Comcast’s 15 million households represent “more than some of the more popular smart home devices out there -- by double,” he said.
Before Wednesday’s announcement, only Comcast’s million-plus Xfinity Home customers had access to the smart home offerings. Home security was a beachhead into broader home automation, Herscovici said. Comcast tried multiple ways to introduce home automation to the mainstream household over the past four years, he said, but it quickly found "it was too early two years ago, and they didn’t quite understand the value.” Customers did understand home security and its benefits because it was a familiar, 30-year-old product, he said. Home automation became a value-add to security.
“Now the market is maturing,” said Herscovici, and consumers are showing more interest, so Comcast is looking to drive adoption on a mass-market scale.
Comcast is using its own voice engine that powers the X1 remote. The executive noted the scale the company has reached with 18 million X1 voice remotes deployed and more than a billion commands spoken over the past year. “We are seeing enormous user engagement with our voice interface,” he said, and that interface has been extended to the home automation product.
On whether Comcast will be at a disadvantage not having Alexa or Google Assistant integration while those digital assistants are rapidly gaining recognition, Herscovici said, “I don’t think so.” Voice, overall, is a powerful interface, "but one of many,” he said. Amazon and Google have “done a great job, [but] I don’t know that consumers are engaged with them as much as the hype might lead you to believe.”
Herscovici said Comcast wants to give customers choice. Over time, “as all the services mature, we’ll look at ways of integrating other voice assistants.”
Comcast’s existing support staff will handle additional smart home customers via chat and phone, said Herscovici. Technicians are available for setup and equipment issues, he said. There’s no cost for online or phone support, but could be a cost for a truck roll, depending on the reason for the call, he said.
On the sales side, home automation will be sold as an add on for internet and video products. For existing subscribers, Comcast will communicate the new service digitally via service updates and feature enhancements. The most powerful sales tool over time will be leveraging the TV and prompting subscribers to try smart home products, he said.
Comcast was judicious in certifying products in its Works with Xfinity partner program when it first launched to avoid tarnishing the brand. Its buy of tech startup Stringify in September relieved that burden, immediately fattening Comcast's smart home device offering with a 500-plus IoT product and digital services portfolio that included brands August, Carrier, Chamberlain, ecobee, GE, Honeywell, Kwikset, Liftmaster, Lifx, Lutron, Nest, Netgear Arlo, Philips Hue, Danalock, Sengled, SkyBell, Tile, Yale and Zen Ecosystems.