Continuing its move into territory dominated by telecom outfits, Comcast has agreed to acquire smart home management company iControl to bolster its smart home service offerings.
Based in Austin, Texas, iControl’s primary consumer product is the Piper home security system, which features devices as well as a platform-as-a-service management software suite. Following a recent round of Series D funding that raised $50 million, total investment in iControl approaches $100 million with previous investments coming from Comcast Ventures, Intel Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
Comcast’s Xfinity home security service runs on iControl’s OpenHome platform, which is also used by security provider ADT. According to Comcast, energy management and other broadband management features will be added to the platform.
Louis Toth, managing director of Comcast Ventures, said the acquisition will “put iControl in a position to offer energy management as a value-added service to its existing home security solution, and provide iControl’s deployment partners the full range of broadband services they want to offer consumers.”
Specific to energy management, Â iControl co-CEO Paul Dawes said the addition will let service providers “offer intuitive green home value-added features.”
Elizabeth Warren takes aim at Comcast
In other Comcast news, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whose name has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hilary Clinton, called out the cable giant in a speech last week.
“Last year was Comcast’s best year in nearly a decade,” she said. “But while big telecom giants have been consuming each other, consumers have been left out in the cold – facing little or no choice in service providers and paying through the nose for cable and internet service.
“Strong executive leadership could revive antitrust enforcement in this country and begin, once again, to fight back against dominant market power and overwhelming political power,” she said. “But we need something else, too – and that’s a revival of the movement that created the antitrust laws in the first place.”
