Connecting Everything at the 2014 International Consumer Electronics Show

By Joe Cozzolino, SVP and GM, Cisco Service Provider Video Infrastructure

Right now, in North America, home security is the leading beachhead into the Internet of Everything (IoE) landscape. AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Rogers, among others, moved into homes this year with advanced security products. All are actively cooking up ways to improve those beachheads, to make our homes – and our things more useful to us.

The ability for service providers (SPs) to drive more ARPU

So far, anecdotal evidence suggests that consumers like the add-on features — like video, water metering, smoke detection, thermostat control, water shut-off valves, proximity detection, and a long list of others. (They also like the break they get on their homeowners insurance…!) With takeup rates for home security systems still hovering in the “below 25%” range, there’s still a lot of room to grow.

As our CEO John Chambers will discuss in his CES keynote, we think the Internet of Everything is the next big thing in the overall transition to all-IP. We define it as a combination of devices, people, data and processes, which all come together in a life-improving way. (As the sole provider of the AT&T Digital Life controller, we’re very familiar with how to build that beachhead into the home.)

Here at CES, we’re showcasing a future vision of the IoE/Connected Life movement — with everything from gluten-detectors to connected basketballs to breaking glass detection. The point of it isn’t to plumb the depths of eyebrow raising use cases, which we’ve all seen perhaps too many times.

The point is to illustrate how the IoE can positively impact service provider networks. Maybe after the basketball breaks the window, the homeowner, who’s at work, gets a notification of three window companies that can be there within the hour.

Those are but a few examples of how the IoE can grow residential service satisfaction, and help service providers grow revenue. We have plenty more! It’s what we call Cisco Connected Life solutions. We are demonstrating these things in action this week at the Cisco booth #13342 in the Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center and in private demonstrations for our service provider customers at The Wynn Hotel Las Vegas.

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