Working with partners to develop Europe’s leading smart home platform was the focal point of Deutsche Telekom’s industry meeting in Berlin.
Around 150 company representatives, industry insiders, and journalists attended the event, which was held under the banner “Smart Home – Smart Partnerships,” to discuss the growing importance and opportunities of the burgeoning market.
Highlighting its open platform QIVICON, Niek Jan van Damme, Board member of Deutsche Telekom, spoke on the significance of the integrated portfolio and its open platform as a “playing field” for innovative solutions and companies. If consumers are going to continue to opt for new products and services, they will need to be offered simple and reliable solutions that can be combined and will grow with their needs. Van Damme was keen to point out that nobody needs to start from scratch, as the smart home portfolio at Telekom is already established on the mass market in Germany, noting that consumers will, in future, be able to use upcoming router models to control their smart home directly. Telekom is working to integrate the relevant functions into the devices, which will become part of the standard portfolio at Deutsche Telekom.
DT is also integrating smart home features into its Magenta product family, making the smart home a central element in the company’s portfolio alongside mobile and fixed-network telephony, Internet, and IPTV. To do this, the company has formed different partner models, the latest of which is with Gigaset, which manufactures fixed-network telephony solutions for consumers and business customers and provides cloud-based security solutions for the smart home. Gigaset joins more than 40 partner companies, including Miele, Samsung, EnBW, e-Q3, Kärcher, Logitech, Osram, Philips, Sonos, and Netatmo.
The technology behind the smart home platform is also seeing continuous development. QIVICON already supports the HomeMatic and ZigBee protocols, as well as IP-based devices such as cameras, and will also support HomeMatic IP by the second half of this year and DECT ULE by the end of this year/start of next year.
QIVICON