News

SK Telecom to roll out Ember-enabled ZigBee "digital smart home" services (31/10/2005)

Award-winning Intelligent Home Network Service lets customers control and monitor their homes remotely

SK Telecom, South Korea's largest cellular provider, will roll out in October, a new "digital smart home" service. It will enable customers to monitor and control their homes remotely using cell phones, and the Internet, through SK Telecom's service offerings. A key enabler of SK Telecom's new Intelligent Home Network Service is a ZigBee wireless networking technology from Ember Corporation. ZigBee, a global wireless industry standard that addresses the unique needs of remote monitoring, control and sensor networks, has become the preferred technology for home automation and control, among other applications.

The first phase of the digital home service rollout will offer a range of Ember-enabled wireless devices, sensors and services to monitor and control appliances, lights, smoke detectors, intrusion detectors, climate controls, gas valves and electronic door locks, all linked to the Internet wirelessly via a ZigBee-based residential gateway. Customers can monitor and control the devices themselves Ð both remotely and in the home Ð using SK Telecom's 24x7 home monitoring service. The tiered services will be offered for both new and existing homes.

SK Telecom's service, which is currently in field tests in 400 Korean households, recently won the "Intelligent Home Network Innovation Award" from the Korean government. It is part of a massive government digital home initiative aimed at connecting three to four million households through home networking systems by 2007. Commercial availability of the service is slated for Q'4 2005 in Korea, with plans to make the technology available globally through licensing agreements with telecommunications providers in other regions.

"SK Telecom selected Ember's 802.15.4/ZigBee-compliant semiconductors and networking software to wirelessly enable its devices due to maturity and completeness of Ember's platform," said an SK Telecom spokesperson. "Ember had the most mature and feature-rich ZigBee platform and tools on the market, enabling us to reduce our product development time dramatically," he said.

TSC Systems, based in Seoul, South Korea was the system integrator for the project. "Korea is the most wired nation in the world, with broadband connectivity in more than three-quarters of all households," said Sungchul Sohn, CEO of TSC Systems. "Ember is the most robust, scalable and reliable ZigBee platform, also offering a feature rich suite of development tools. We believe that SK Telecom's Ember Ð enabled Intelligent Home Network Service will help proliferate ZigBee as the standard for wireless home monitoring and control in the region."

Ember's ZigBee system is particularly well suited for low-power, low-data-rate applications that help make homes and buildings safer and consume less energy. In addition to SK Telecom, Ember's networking platform is already in commercial deployments in applications for home control and monitoring, asset tracking, commercial lighting control and automatic meter reading.

www.ember.com