Telstra Is Launching A Smart Homes Monitoring System

Telstra today announced plans to enter into the smart home market, with a new Smart Home Platform launching later this year. The platform will be available on a subscription package model, coming in “at the cost of a couple of movie tickets” per month.

The average Australian home has 9 connected devices, and by 2020 that figure is tipped to be over 30.

“Smart devices have been around for some time, but they haven’t taken off in a big way,” Telstra said at the launch, pointing to connectivity as a main reason “It doesn’t matter how smart they are, if you can’t control them simply.”

The smart home industry is predicted to be worth a billion dollars in the next 5 years, and Telstra wants in — big time.

Telstra wants you to be “the conductor” of your smart devices using its Smart Home Platform. It is designed to be “open and flexible”, with the ability to add new devices as they become available.

“The Telstra smart home is not really about the devices,” Telstra says, instead focusing on the automation, curation and connections between those devices.

This move is part of Telstra’s diversification into being a technology company. It sees this platform as a way to deliver new products and services — like telemedicine and health monitoring — and look at how they can be linked.

So what will it actually be able to do?

Telstra has a vision of being able to see when your kids are home, when your dog is chewing on your shoes, and if you turned your iron off. Basically, at this point what is on offer resembles a home monitoring service.

There’s a “Watch and Monitor” package and an “Automation and Energy” package. Each package includes a combination of door and window sensors, smart thermostats, smart power plugs, Sengled element touch smart lights, motion sensors, outdoor Wi-Fi cameras, indoor Wi-Fi HD cameras, Lockwood smart door locks and of course the Smart home Hub.



The subscriptions, which are yet to be priced, will be open to non-Telstra as well as Telstra customers.

Installation is not provided at this point, but Telstra says it is “looking at solutions” to add to the packages available.

This article originally appeared on Gizmodo Australia


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