The new smart home service, O2 Home, will be expanded to the rest of the U.K. soon
U.K. telecommunications company O2 has launched a new service dubbed ‘O2 Home’, which lets people control their heating, lighting, locks and more from their mobile phone.
The mobile operator has launched three packages, which are only initially available to customers in London but will be gradually rolled out in the rest of the country in the near future.
A Home Comfort package includes a tado smart thermostat, two smart plugs and one presence sensor, while a Home View package consists of a Samsung camera, a wide view camera, an open and close sensor, and a presence sensor. These two packages include a “smart hub” that can be managed from a phone-based app and cost £30 ($40) per month.
A cheaper Home Connect package (£20 per month) includes a hub, two presence sensors, two open and close sensors and two smart plugs.
The open and close sensors send an alert when a door or window is opened, while the smart plugs enable customers to turn electrical equipment off and on remotely.
O2 Home customers can also opt for a smart thermostat which uses their phone’s GPS to automatically heat the house as they return home.
The telco also said that there are 17 additional products which can be added to the packages. These products include cameras, smart smoke detectors, smart flood sensors, powerline adaptor and indoor siren, among others.
“O2 Home is all about connecting our customers to the people and things that matter. Keeping your home up to date with technology shouldn’t be complicated – so we’ve brought together connectivity and smart technology in a simple package to give customers peace of mind wherever they are,” Nina Bibby, Marketing and Consumer Director at O2, said. “We’ve made everything simple – with installation experts to help set things up and an app to monitor and control your home 24 hours a day. It’s smart technology for everyone, not just the tech-savvy.”
In January this year, O2 said that it was working AT&T Digital Life and tado to launch the smart home offer in the UK.
According to a recent study by O2, nearly three quarters of people in the U.K. want to future proof their home with smart technology. However, 80% are putting off updating their homes due to a fear of not knowing how to install the technology and a lack of confidence about using it, O2 said.
