Verizon Discontinues Home Automation Service After 2 Years 85
An anonymous reader writes "Verizon has discontinued its Home Monitoring and Control solution, a $10/month service for do-it-yourselfers that enables remote monitoring and control of security, lighting, thermostats and more. The author notes Verizon 'was attempting to become the first successful provider of a DIY security/automation system that had a monthly fee separate from a professionally monitored security system. ... Providers could (and do) charge premiums of $10 or more for automation and self-monitored security as an attachment to professional monitoring, but not as a standalone service.'"
DIY, huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're paying a third party for a service, it's not DIY.
I've had DIY home security for almost 20 years now. There's no need to pay for monitoring. When something is worth alerting me about, the system sends me a text ( before that, it paged me).
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I did this for quite a while too. Unfortunately it doesn't qualify for any insurance discounts, so I went with a system that does. The insurance discount is about equal to the monthly bill, and I don't have to worry about any maintenance.
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That's legit. I'm a little different... any discount that only offsets the cost of the service isn't a big enough discount to tempt me. I'm one of those weirdos who doesn't trust third parties with my data, so I run my own cloud service, my own email server, etc. specifically to minimize the exposure of my data to unaccountable companies.
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I think you meant to reply to Mr. Dog & .40 below, not to me.
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Take your leftist anti gun rhetoric somewhere else. He didn't even mention guns. Also, it's not in the best interest of free societies to run around telling individuals that they should leave everything to unaccountable 'professionals' (who are also human, too, btw).
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Point of order: there's nothing "leftist" about anti-gun rhetoric. As the socialist writer George Orwell noted, "That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
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Larry Ellison, is that you?
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Monitoring service & electrical service are not comparable things.
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No, I'll argue that you're paying for a product (the music). If you're paying someone to monitor, you're paying for a service. If this were DIY, you'd be Doing It Yourself rather than paying someone else to do it. But your example does clue me in to the source of our disagreement -- we're talking about different levels of abstraction. For me, the whole point of DIY is to not be reliant on someone for the thing.
My real point is that if Verizon was marketing this as a DIY thing, then there's no mystery as to
DIY Security (Score:1)
My dog and .40 are the best DIY home security.
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For every time a gun is used in self-defense in the home, there are 7 assaults or murders, 11 suicide attempts, and 4 accidents involving guns in or around a home.
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Those who with a car sometimes die by their own car....
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On the other hand, in the vast majority of cases, when a gun is used for self protection in the home, no shots ar
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So let me get this straight. In the US, you have the much lauded right to bear arms, but it only applies if you actually fire a shot?
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I am not even close to what anyone would call a "Conservative". It's just that Liberals tend to be so batshit insane that they can't even comprehend that there is anything but the Red team and Blue team.
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This happened not to long ago in Kansas where a person legally carrying concealed was convicted of a felony for threatening to use deadly force but not actually using it. Had he shot his attacker, he would have saved himself years of legal work.
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... in the vast majority of cases ... the homeowner does not contact the authorities ...
Bullshit. State laws on the subject vary massively; there's no way to make a blanket statement like that unless you're in confirmation-bias mode.
Re:DIY Security (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you know that for every car manufactured, at least 95% of them are involved in some kind of crime? From parking and traffic violations to human trafficking and murder, cars are the cornerstone for this EPIDEMIC!! ZOMG!
Soccer mom fear mongering doesn't make a good argument for (or against) anything.
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"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Your right to protect oneself with a firearm isn't mentioned. Your right to support a well regulated Militia to defend your free state, and keep and bear Arms are all enumerated, however.
I don't disagree that you have a right to keep an bear arms, just the purpose of the amendment.
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You do know that statistics like that are complete and total BS.
If someone were to encourage an intruder to leave quickly (with no shots fired), there is no accountability nor paper trail. Not everything should turn into a complaint to law enforcement. A lot of those potential intruders learn from their mistake.
If, as another example, the local hoodlums knew someone was well armed, they may choose to avoid trouble with that person. Again, no shots fired. No police reports.
Some of us have a very safe z
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Like the next AC said.. If someone wants good guns, it's easier to hit a police station, gun store, pawn shop, or the local national guard armory. Police stations can be rough, except the "office" stations, which are basically unmanned outside of normal business hours.
Gun stores are suppose to vault all their weapons after hours. When I've talked to some, they depend on their building security, considering the entire building to be the "vault", including the sales floor.
One gun store was shut down recen
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For every time a gun is used in self-defense in the home,
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Citation? The lowest number I've seen on defensive gun uses is 64,000 year. That's via a methodology expected to undercount, but even if we assume that it's an overcount and take *half* of it, then defensive gun use is likely to be more than three times as common as homicide via firearm [unreasonable.org].
Other estimates -- highly controversial ones, to be sure --
Re:DIY Security (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, my dog gets pretty crazy after 40 ounces of malt liquor too.
Re:DIY Security (Score:4, Funny)
So, while the dog pisses on the fire, you shoot into the air to summon emergency services?
Re: DIY Security (Score:1)
"Few customers wanted it." (Score:3, Funny)
"It's just as well," the Verizon spokesperson said, "It wasn't close to turning a profit, and that didn't even count the extra costs feeding the home info from all sensors to the NSA, whom we aren't even legally allowed to charge."
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"It's just as well," the Verizon spokesperson said, "It wasn't close to turning a profit, and that didn't even count the extra costs feeding the home info from all sensors to the NSA, whom we aren't even legally allowed to charge."
Are you kidding? The NSA (and other TLAs) get charged a *crapton* for siphoning data from private orgs: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ro... [forbes.com]
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Exactly, and the taxpayer foots the bill. we pay for our own oppression.
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Well...not that this isn't bad, but where else would it come from? Would you prefer that international funds were used? Some foreign nation or agency?
Y'see, I'm confused... (Score:2)
If you're paying Verizon to do it, how is it DIY?
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The sensor array is DIY, you pay Verizon to hook up your array to their monitoring service.
Rather like if you built your own car then payed tolls to drive it on the government's roads.
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You install it yourself and monitor it yourself.
Which I did with my own alarm, security camera and home automation systems. Without paying anyone $10/month extra for the privilege of hooking that stuff up to my broadband connection and having worldwide access to it.
Not in their wheelhouse (Score:4, Interesting)
- There just aren't a lot of devices linked yet within a home, especially since Verizon was targeting a novice and not someone who's played with X10 or can configure their own router.
- Verizon support is terrible for most products, and this would likely have been even worse.
- Who really needs to control their lighting and thermostats more than they already do. By now anyone with a computer or Verizon Internet service likely has a programmable thermostat, motion sensor outdoor lights, and timers on lamps for when they go on vacation. Is it worth paying a bloated company like Verizon $120 a year to help you manage what you're already handling fine for free?
The nail in the coffin was probably Google purchasing Nest. And no, I did not RTFA.
In Soviet America... (Score:2)
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"In Soviet America, home automation automates--" nah, I got nothing.
NSA data mining you...
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"In soviet america, home automation automates you." Sounds about right..
So then who is making money on home security? (Score:1)
ADT stock just plunged 25% recently because they aren't doing well...
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Being secure means paying attention, not acting like an asshole and just generally not being stupid. Which a bunch of cheap sensors and some noisemakers won't come close to replicating.
Not to mention that the kind of people/domiciles that could actually use a boost in security probably don't have the disposable income to throw away on some plastic junk.
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almost all crooks are going to skip houses with alarms
This is a good reason to put a battery powered blinking LED somewhere in view of the outside world. It's not like it takes much to make it seem like you might have an alarm system.
every telco thought this was low-hanging fruit. (Score:4, Insightful)
and it hasn't been.
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The problem with any service like this, is it will never meet the profit precedent set by 160 byte SMS messages, so it is always doomed to failure in the eyes of a Telco.
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There should be a link to the classic interface at the bottom of the page. Click it, and you won't be bothered with the beta anymore. At least, when I got drafted months ago, that's how it worked.
MBA "Leadership" (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why I laugh at large corporation "innovation".
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Mark my words, within the next 36 months there will be an explosion in that marketspace
Indeed. Both Lowe's and Staples [cepro.com] have been farting around with standards-based (zigbee, z-wave and wi-fi) home automation equipment for about a year and it looks like they are ramping up for 2014.
Self monitoring for DSC and Honeywell systems (Score:1)
That's not true (Score:2)
http://www.smarthome.com/alarm... [smarthome.com]
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It was mostly things like remote controlled power strips, IP cameras, thermostats, and electronic door locks. I'm not surprised they stopped selling the service since most of those things either don't need a computer to control (IP cameras with a built-in server or a central reciever for multiple cameras) or could just be set to a timer (power outlets and thermostats). It was a neat service for people who didn't want to put in the effort to setup their own stuff and wanted a all-in-one deal to control all o