Security Broadband signs on marketing partners

AUSTIN, Texas-Security Broadband in January announced it struck marketing agreements with two national cable providers to market its broadband residential security monitoring service to cable customers in two U.S. markets. Comcast Cable Communications and Cox Communications will both begin to market Security Broadband's SafeVillage program sometime this quarter, an offering that uses the broadband cable network for in-home video monitoring and two-way voice. The agreements cement the second phase of Security Broadband's development of its product, which began with a pilot program of homes in the Las Vegas area last year. "We are really hopeful that this is the stepping stone to the third part of the plan, which is mass deployment in 2003," said William Glasgow, president of Security Broadband. Cox Communications, which along with Comcast and several other U.S. and Canadian cable companies were early investors in Security Broadband, will market SafeVillage to its high-speed Internet customers in Las Vegas, beginning sometime this quarter, said Jayson Juraska, vice president of business development for Cox. The company will revisit the offering sometime in the summer to determine its popularity, he said. Although the company doesn't release subscriber numbers in specific markets, Cox has about 779,000 high-speed subscribers nationwide. About 375,000 of the company's 6.2 million national cable customers are located in Las Vegas, Juraska said. "The fact that we're going into the marketing phase suggests that we're pretty optimistic about this," Juraska said. "It's really a litmus test of what our customers think about the product and what value they place on it." Through operating offices in both Las Vegas and Sarasota, Security Broadband will provide the installation and related service to Cox and Comcast customers who sign onto the security service, Glasgow said. The company's central monitoring facility is in Orlando, Fla. Initially, SafeVillage will be offered as a standalone product to Cox customers, but Juraska anticipated the product will soon be bundled into Cox's other offerings, a strategy that has proved very successful for Cox, he said, through the use of multiple or single bills for each customer. "If that's what the customer wants, we would build some incentives into our pricing package policy where it provides a very compelling value to our customers," Juraska said. Comcast will market the product in their Sarasota, Fla. coverage area. That company will soon debut its own high-speed Internet service, company officials said. Although not yet commercially available, SafeVillage is the first product to make a debut from Security Broadband, but the company is already investigating using the broadband connection for other related niches, Glasgow said. The company is exploring a small business security product that mirrors its SafeVillage residential offering as well as a personal emergency response product that it still in the long-term planning stages, he said.