Comcast Offering Home Security Bundle

vaporland writes "Bloomberg reports that media giant Comcast has begun offering home security bundles with cable or phone service in selected markets. From the article: 'The Philadelphia-based company is starting Xfinity Home Security in seven markets for $39.95 a month. It lets users remotely adjust lights and thermostats, watch cameras, and get e-mail or text alerts when doors and windows are opened and closed. Customers can watch live video of their homes on an Xfinity website or with an Apple Inc. iPad application.'"

Centralized Burglary Map

[MBCook]

So now, someone can break into Comcast and easily see which houses have good stuff and don't have anyone at home. That must be very handy for thieves.

As a customer, I already don't trust Comcast and think they cost too much. Why would I pay them $40 a month for this? Especially since it would take away from my internet bandwidth?

added equipment like needed low on Sensors / keypa

[Joe_Dragon]

http://www.comcast.com/homesecurity/iControlSMA/index.htm [comcast.com] Only Window/Door Sensors (4) Motion Detector (1) Wireless Keypad (1) Keychain Remote (1) Touch Screen (1) Cellular and Battery Backup Included what will more Sensors cost $0.25 /m each? Motion Detectors at $2 /m? added keypad $5-$10 /m? added Keychain Remote $3 /m see how much they bill you rent the cable box + they also bill you to rent the remote as well. That cost can go up fast. Also is there a Cellular modem rent fee like how you have to rent the emta that is not part of listed price.

Re:Uplinks

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Yes and no. Obviously, you don't want video feeds of your house going over the public internet in the clear; but(since part of the service does involve accessing them over the internet from an offsite location), Comcast already has to have a secure-over-public internet approach sorted out(presumably just TLS). Also, since Comcast is the one running the setup, it is presumably the case that the route taken over the public internet would just be a hop from you directly to them anyway(since Comcast is both the ISP, and thus the closest thing on the network, and the one operating the server side of this service). Unless they really were to fuck it up, which would likely imperil the storage, or login page, or video streaming capabilities, you wouldn't get usefully greater security.

Since the two logical links(Comcast qua ISP, and whatever in-house Comcast services you are subscribed to) travel over the same line and assorted hardware, reliability is unlikely to be better over one than over the other, and having Comcast able to carve out swaths of untouchable bandwidth for its own services really just makes product bundling and squelching internet-based competitors easier and more tempting.

For non-technical users, the partition probably does have the virtue of providing a crude form of QoS; but the overall market effect of it is hard to be optimistic about.