Telecom Lead Europe: Swisscom has signed a joint venture
with Asoka Corp., a provider of powerline communications (PLC) hardware and
services, to sell white label residential energy management and other digital
living services to telecommunications carriers for resale to consumers in
Europe and North America.
Swisscom Ventures, the company’s venture capital division, invested in myStrom,
the new joint venture between Swisscom and Asoka Corp. The majority of
the myStrom joint venture is owned by Swisscom.
Swisscom will benefit from an additional
revenue-generating service for its IPTV customers in Switzerland, as well as
having a new source of revenue through sales throughout Europe.
As per the JV agreement, Asoka will receive a percentage
of European sales and will benefit from supplying the adapters for all
customers worldwide, opening a new sales channel for its hardware. Asoka will
also gain revenue leading the sales effort in North America.
Swisscom is now selling myStrom-branded home energy
management in Switzerland.
The mobile giant is planning to introduce additional
services in 2012 such as home monitoring, parental controls and thermostat
control.
The myStrom service is based on Asoka’s PlugLine PLC
adapters, which combine home area networks with energy data collection and
management capabilities through residential electrical lines. The solution
needs no expensive equipment or complicated installation. Users can monitor
their energy use and schedule automatic appliance on/off times through a
user-friendly web-based monitoring service developed and managed by Asoka.
Adoption of home energy management products and services
has accelerated over the past year, enabled by cloud service platforms and
smartphones,” said Par Lange, investment officer for Swisscom Ventures.
By 2016 global revenues for home energy management
systems and services is predicted to reach $4.3 billion. The increasing demand
for energy efficiency in the home, as well as other smart home services, is a
promising market for Swisscom,” Lange added.
Deployment of myStrom throughout Switzerland has
resulted in enhanced customer satisfaction and indicates this is the best way
to bring affordable energy management to homes throughout Europe,” said Andreas
Martschitsch, myStrom chairman of the board and Swisscom’s head of In-Home
Connectivity.
myStrom is the simplest solution on the market, both in
terms of hardware installation and the cloud-based portal for energy monitoring
and management,” said Eric Grubel, CEO of Asoka.
