4home

Converged Experiences, Events, Home Devices, Network Infrastructure

Motorola Participates in the 2012 NCTC Independent Show

July 31, 2012 : BY Motorola

Last week, Motorola Home participated in the National Cable Television Cooperative’s (NCTC) Independent Show in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. With more than 320 operator attendees, representing 180 service providers (cable and telco), and a total show attendance of more than 1,100 – this year was the highest attended event in NCTC history.

Motorola’s participation in this show helps to emphasize our commitment to regional service providers by highlighting our cost-effective, next-generation, consumer experiences that can be easily deployed across their existing networks. Attendees received live booth demos of Motorola’s DreamGallery, 4Home and Carrier Ethernet solutions, to name a few.

During the show, it was announced that Motorola won request for proposals (RFPs) from the National Cable Television Cooperative Inc. (NCTC) for standard- and high-definition Digital Transport Adapter (DTA) devices. DTAs are inexpensive, one-way “channel-zappers” that convert digital signals to analog signals, allowing operators free up spectrum for DOCSIS 3.0 and more HD services, and can help small- and mid-sized operators kick-start their all-digital video migrations.

NCTC members can buy DTAs from any vendor, but this deal gives members access to special pricing on Motorola equipment that’s lower than they can probably get on their own. According to NCTC President and CEO Rich Fickle, Motorola “really stepped up” on product pricing and support to secure the organization’s first RFP on the video devices. To learn more, check out this article from Light Reading.

Tagged as: 4home, DreamGallery, home, independent show, light reading, nctc

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Home Devices

The Smart Home—in a Box

January 6, 2012 : BY Motorola

The Connected Home has arrived. If you’ve been following the news, or if you’re a Verizon FIOS customer, you’ve probably heard about Motorola’s work with Verizon in the rollout of its new Home Monitoring and Control service which lets you remotely monitor your home, control devices and appliances, and manage your energy consumption.

The Managed Home Solutions team at Motorola wasn’t content to sit on its laurels. Its new Connected Home Gateway makes the smart home even smarter. And that means a simpler experience for consumers. The awards committee at CEA took note, recognizing it with a CES 2012 Innovations Honoree Award.

The Connected Home Gateway is truly plug-and-play. With the push of a button, consumers wirelessly pair the devices in their home and connect them to the cloud for local or remote management on a TV, smartphone, PC, tablet, etc. A powerful 1.2 GHz processor paired with Motorola’s open 4Home software platform supports and abstracts a host of standards and protocols, hiding the complexity of multiple disparate devices on the home network.

For the back end, Motorola’s on-board EDGE™ Service Assurance software lets operators deliver support, proactive quality assurance and service activation in real-time, meaning faster, more efficient customer service.

Motorola’s 2011 Media Engagement Barometer shows that 36 percent of the global respondents would like their communications provider, instead of home security alarm companies or utility providers, to supply a home automation service.

For operators looking to expand their offerings, home monitoring, control and energy management applications represent a big growth opportunity. So take note operators. That sound you hear is opportunity knocking.

Motorola is showcasing the new 4Home Connected Home Gateway at CES 2012, Booth #8644. Drop by and take a look.

Tagged as: 4home, CES 2012, converged experiences, Gateway

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Converged Experiences

The Connected Home, by Motorola and Verizon

October 12, 2011 : BY Motorola

It’s here. Check out Verizon’s Home Monitoring and Control service suite that launched this week. 

The team at Motorola 4Home has been breathing in smart home all week–turning on and off lights with their PCs, running setup wizards with TV remotes and adjusting thermostats with smartphones. All to make sure it’s been thoroughly tested. 

The Motorola 4Home platform is powering Verizon’s new services. You’ll find our embedded software platform on each gateway that ships with the Verizon service kits. This software talks to our portal server in the cloud to let you to control and manage your home’s devices–on your PC, FiOS TV, smartphone and eventually tablet. 

Upgrade your house to a smart home today, and let us know what kinds of features you’d like to see in the future. In the meanwhile,  check out today’s press release  and take a look at the following video for a preview of our latest work.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4pOGQHlkZw]

Tagged as: 4home

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Converged Experiences

Part Two: 4Home Q&A with Jim Hunter

March 23, 2011 : BY Motorola

Q: When might consumers first begin to leverage 4Home technologies under the new Motorola Mobility brand?
A: Verizon has already announced their intention to offer this to their customers. Real-time remote monitoring and control of consumers’ homes and their energy consumption will be possible using select smartphones. This collaboration between 4Home and Verizon was showcased during CES 2011 at the Verizon booth.

The beauty of our 4Home offering is that our service provider customers are able to leverage the software and its services for what they need and brand as their own. We work closely with them to ensure they deliver current and future needs to their customers, but ultimately, our customers are in complete control over how they want to leverage 4Home software to fulfill their customer offerings.

Q: Does Motorola have any customers trialing 4Home technologies?
At the 2011 CES, we announced we are leveraging the Verizon 4G LTE Mobile Broadband network. This means it will be possible, using select smartphones, to offer consumers real-time remote monitoring and control of their homes and energy consumption.

4Home has been working with Sensus for the past couple years on an energy management system that can supply utilities with a demand response (DR)/home area network (HAN) offering. The software component was launched in the middle of 2010 and has been sold to a number of utilities; it’s currently in trials globally.

Q: Energy management is talked about quite a bit in the home automation world. How does Motorola Mobility see this market growing and the 4Home integration becoming a more valuable asset?
A: The home represents an incredible opportunity for us to engage with consumers in new ways. We believe that developing and bringing energy management tools to the market will be a huge catalyst in propelling this segment forward. According to Pike Research, by 2015, 28 million homeowners around the world will be using some kind of high-tech tool to manage energy usage.

Integrating 4Home into our overall offerings will ultimately enable consumers to manage their energy consumption in real-time. Consumers will have the ability to receive information about various appliance power usage as well as forecasts of future energy bills. This will empower them with the ability to adjust their energy consumption habits in real-time. We believe efficiently managing home energy consumption is a valuable service for consumers in a world where energy resources are constrained and expensive.

Q: Home security and surveillance, along with mobile health monitoring, are also hot topics in this field. Anything to report on these?
A. We see these exciting areas as opportunities for the 4Home software solution, and there are currently developments underway on the service side. However we are not ready to provide details just yet.

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Converged Experiences

Part One: 4Home Q&A with Jim Hunter

March 22, 2011 : BY Motorola

As you know, Motorola Mobility acquired 4Home back in Dec 2010. With the CTIA Wireless Show taking place this week, I recently got a chance to sit down with Jim Hunter, Fellow of Technical Staff at Motorola Mobility to learn a bit more about 4Home and how it plays into the larger home strategy of Motorola Mobility.

Q: Can you explain what 4Home does?
A: Sure. 4Home provides an award-winning connected home software platform to world-class partners in retail, service provider, and utility markets who desire to offer their consumers energy management, home control, or monitoring solutions. Our platform gives the consumer a simple and intuitive application for staying connected to their home, regardless of location. The application is delivered over the Internet and provides comfort, security, convenience, and awareness to consumers through multiple user-friendly interfaces including smartphones, Web browsers, tablets, and TVs.

Q: Why did Motorola Mobility decide to acquire 4Home?
A: Motorola is focused on building the industry’s best cloud-based software suite, which includes Medios, EDGE and SecureMedia, to enable service providers to offer advanced multi-screen services to their subscribers. 4Home’s open-standards based software platform is strongly aligned with that vision, and a natural fit.

Q: How does Motorola foresee the 4Home acquisition playing into its larger home strategy?
A: Motorola Mobility has performed primary consumer research that clearly indicates consumers want to be more connected and yet more mobile. At the same time, we are in an unprecedented era of convergence: cloud and walled garden, MPEG & IP, mobile phones and computing, content & community. The end result is that service providers must find a way to keep their services in front of subscribers at all times, and those services must help make subscribers lives better in some meaningful way.

The net result for service providers is they must build a sophisticated service management system in the cloud that works with all devices over any network. This need drove the design of Motorola Medios for content services, and it also drove the design of the 4Home solution for home management services. By adding the 4Home services to Mobility’s existing content services management, we now have a full spectrum of consumer service capability that will help service providers improve customer satisfaction, increase ARPU, and reduce churn.

Like with Medios, the 4Home consumer applications will be tightly integrated with Motorola Mobility smartphones and tablets to give consumers a superlative experience.

Q: Is Motorola currently integrating any 4Home technologies/products into its set top box and/or Medios software platform?
A: Our current focus is meeting our customer commitments, selling the 4Home solution into new customers, and integrating our consumer experience into the full range of Motorola Mobility devices.

Stay tuned for part two tomorrow…

Tagged as: 4home

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Awards

4Home Scoops up Two CES Innovation Awards

January 7, 2011 : BY Motorola

In addition to showcasing some exciting demos with Onstar and Verizon Wireless at CES, the Motorola Mobility 4Home team also took home two CES Innovations Awards for jointly-developed hardware products: Home Application Gateway in the Integrated Home Systems category and HDI Dune Pro in the Multi-Room Audio/Video category. The CES Innovations Awards recognizes the most innovative consumer electronics products in the industry

Tagged as: 4home, CES 2011, Events

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Converged Experiences, Events

4Home at CES

January 6, 2011 : BY Motorola



The 4Home Connected Solutions division of Motorola Mobility is busy at this year’s CES Show, participating in an exciting demo with OnStar and Verizon Wireless to demonstrate in-vehicle connected home services such as energy management and home monitoring over 4G LTE. They showcased an outfitted Buick LaCrosse in-dash wireless applications in the Verizon Wireless booth.

If you are at CES, stop by the following booths to see what the 4Home team has been up to:

- Verizon Telecom, Verizon Wireless & OnStar (#35216, South Hall)
- Intel (#7153, Central Hall)
- HDI Dune (#21960, South Hall)

Tagged as: 4home, CES 2011

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