Charter kills security service –
Charter’s product shutdown highlights lack of interoperability in alarm systems.
Jon Brodkin –Jan 90, (8:) ****************************************************************** pm UTC
Charter partnered with Amazon’s Ring and Abode to give customers a free equipment bundle if they buy a year of monitoring, but Those deals may not be enough to compensate customers who purchased a lot of devices from Charter over the years. Charter is not providing refunds. No interoperability
A big question is why there’s no way for Charter customers to keep using these devices, given that they rely on the Zigbee specification that allows multi-vendor interoperability for smart-home products. Why can’t Charter customers connect their security devices to a Zigbee-enabled smart-home hub, or use them with another alarm-monitoring service that supports Zigbee? One user on DSLReports pointed outthat years ago, Spectrum devices “were firmware coded to prevent them from being seen and usable within the normal universe of Zigbee devices.” But could Charter issue a software update that lets these products work with other Zigbee systems?We then contacted the**************** Zigbee Alliance, an industry group that develops standards and certifies products to ensure multi- vendor interoperability. The first answer a Zigbee Alliance spokesperson gave us made it sound like the Charter products should be re-usable with other vendors’ Zigbee-enabled systems:
“The answer varies by exact device,” the Zigbee Alliance told us. “Each device will have a factory reset method, but what that is varies by manufacturer.”The Zigbee Alliance is trying to solve this problem with its All Hubs Initiativeannounced in May 2020, which aims to improve interoperability, the spokesperson told us. But it appears that effort won’t help Charter customers keep their products running after February 5. Factory reset won’t helpAfter the Zigbee Alliance answered our questions, we asked Charter if it’s possible for customers to perform a factory reset and pair their devices with non-Charter Zigbee hubs.
The Ring and Abode deals are probably enough to satisfy at least some Charter customers. But some say these deals won’t replace all the equipment they’ve purchased over the years.
Steve Rottinghouse, a longtime Spectrum security customer who was profiled
by KSBY News in Central California this month, said he “spent almost $ for cameras, motion sensors, door sensors, window sensors, and a thermostat. ” But he said the deals offered through Ring and Abode would replace only “a fraction of the setup he has here in his house, and [that] he will have to spend hundreds of dollars more to build a similar Ring security system,” KSBY reported.“I called [Charter] and asked if I can get a credit toward my phone bill or cable bill , “Rottinghouse told the news station. “And they said no.”
************************************ (Read More) (**********************************
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings