I had an interesting conversation about the future of Home Area Networks (HANs) today with INSIDE Secure, a privately-owned company based in beautiful Aix-en-Provence, France. As one who lives near Basingstoke, I can only imagine what that must be like. But, I digress.
INSIDE Secure make contact and contactless chips to enable device makers to facilitate secure payments, present identification credentials, and exchange information. You may be more familiar with them under their old name, INSIDE Contactless. This changed in October with the acquisition of the Secure Microcontroller Solutions division of Atmel, so that INSIDE now also offers secure, complementary contact systems.
Talking to two of their executives, Olivier Debelleix, Business Line Manager – Embedded Security, and Laurent Sustek, Smart Metering Marketing Manager, it’s clear that their interest in smart metering and energy services is paying off. As a private company, they don’t disclose many figures (except to say that the acquisition of the Atmel division has doubled the company’s size to 325 people, and that INSIDE Secure turned over US$156 million in 2010) but their enthusiasm for smart services speaks volumes.
INSIDE’s expertise in NFC (Near Field Communications) is well documented, so how have their customers changed and what role will NFC play in future in this area of M2M communications?
Debelleix said: “In the early days our customers were mainly smart card makers. Now we are talking to smart meter manufacturers. We’re adding security to the interface. We foresee several uses of NFC, mostly for maintenance of the smart meter, for example to upgrade firmware. Data collectors have a lot of issues, including security. There will be one data collector for several houses, collecting data from several meters securely.”
Telehealth services are next
As well as a display to monitor and control power consumption, Sustek added that they are receiving requests from manufacturers to incorporate NFC modules for Telehealth services. This is turning these monitoring and metering control points into gateways for next gen Home Area Networks.
That begs the question of when will we see widespread box integration and service aggregation around a single home automation eco-system? Technical challenges are no longer the issue they were – this is more about creating the right business model to gather a viable and secure eco-system of partners for Home Gateways offering: energy monitoring and control; internet access; 3G / 4G mobile (where in-building or local coverage is an issue); alarm systems; telehealth and telecare; and TV, games and video.
The key issue for me is Trust. If I know that my service bundle is built with a portfolio of contact, contactless, and dual-interface products for developing secure applications then I’ll be happy to transmit my family’s usage data for all kinds of services. As it stands, there’s not a snowball-in-hell’s chance that I’d send personal health data via BT, O2, Sky or Virgin Media in case my Everything ends up Everywhere.
