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NEW YORK - (Reuters) - AT&T Inc (T.N) is making a big investment in a nationwide wireless home monitoring service that will potentially add $1 billion to its annual revenue as part of its ongoing effort to expand beyond cell phones.
The new service called "Digital Life" will monitor homes for everything from water damage to burglaries and will let customers remotely do things like adjust temperature or unlock doors, using an Internet connection.
AT&T will start trials of the service this year. It will involve sensors and cameras linked to a central home system that will connect wirelessly to AT&T monitoring centers, said Glenn Lurie, the AT&T executive spearheading the project.
Lurie said in an interview that AT&T is hiring "lots of people" to support the service and confirmed that they will announce the plan on Monday in New Orleans
He did not want to set a specific revenue target for the business but said he sees it as one of AT&T's largest revenue growth opportunities, "if not the largest," with "very significant" incremental growth" in 2013.
"When you're a company like AT&T, when you're a $130 billion plus company, ... you look at opportunities that are billion-dollar opportunities," Lurie said. "Obviously to grow our business at any level, , you have to look for significant opportunities. We view this as a significant opportunity."
Lurie said the industry is ripe for growth since only 20 percent of U.S. homes have security systems.
Lurie added that AT&T might also expand the service to support small businesses and senior citizens who want to live in their own homes even though they need close health monitoring.
"Our goal is to bring something people have never seen before," Lurie said.
Photo credit: Reuters Danny Moloshok
edited from Reuters
