Comments on: AT&T Digital Life home automation Hands-on

By: seen-it-all-before

seen-it-all-before — Tue, 08 May 2012 03:26:00 +0000

This from the company that sold SecurityLink to ADT because security wasn’t a good business, sold their GSM network in California to T-Mobile only to spend Billions trying to buy it back, spent billions on U-Verse only to decide it was too costly and didn’t make enough profit! This too will go away as soon as a new salesman comes in to tell them about a new widgit on the horizon. They have about as much foresight as a buggywhip salesman… at&t needs new blood that can see past their bonus plan.

By: jhdale

jhdale — Tue, 08 May 2012 02:48:00 +0000

Just like every time someone new tries to enter the home automation field, they pretend no one else has done it before. In this case they’re even using an existing system (z-wave) and merely offering software.

An iPad app? There are lots already. Most do not require multiple clicks to turn on a light, so I can’t even credit AT&T with a slick interface.

Home automation is held up in a few places. For significant adoption, it needs prices to fall, it needs installation to be simple, and it needs configuration of the installed hardware to be easy. Which of those points has AT&T addressed here? None. None of the videos showed installation, none of them showed set-up, and there are no prices listed — although since this is just Z-wave, presumably it will be the same pricing as existing Z-wave gear. So these video just show the same results you could get with a dozen different systems that are already on the market.

By: Kerrige

Kerrige — Tue, 08 May 2012 02:26:00 +0000

So basically AT&T is late to a party already available from a dozen other companies, some with better look and feel. Vivint for example has been doing this for several years now. Awesome AT&T way to play catchup instead of trying to be innovative.