Norway's Lyse Smart is showing how broadband-enabled applications can improve the lives of elderly people and provide a cost-effective alternative to traditional care home services.

Robin Mersh

October 20, 2014

2 Min Read
The Human Gain of the Smart Home

The Broadband Forum and its members have played their part over the years in helping to take broadband from virtually a theory to a commodity used by more than 740 million people.

Now, as an enabler of the Internet of Things through its current and planned work, we are seeing many challenges being met and innovations introduced, and at the Forum's recent Q3 meeting we heard about a smart home development across Norway that is already improving the technology -- and the lives -- of nearly 350,000 households.

The keynote presenter at the meeting in Dublin was Jan Holm, the CEO of Lyse Smart, the part of Norwegian utility company Lyse that is developing services under the Smartly brand. Holm told a compelling story of a power company that built a fiber backbone to allow it to introduce triple-play services and did it so well that its dream to have 27,000 customers in the municipality of Stavanger in south-west Norway has been exceeded; It now has 335,000 customers nationwide.

I'm obviously proud that the Forum's TR-069 remote access protocol provides a key element for the Smartly services through partner Axiros, but Lyse's vision for the truly connected smart home was what made Holm's presentation so outstanding. His background, in the medical sector, gave him a unique perspective on the care and lifestyle of the elderly across Norway, where it costs €70,000 (US$89,400) per person per year for care home provision. By utilizing smart home solutions, Lyse can not only extend the time that people can live in their own homes, but the support they receive can increase as time demands, even to the point where the homes of the elderly become "virtual" care home rooms that are managed and monitored from a central care home location by local administrations.

Quite apart from the technology that makes it possible, or the savings it would make for local administrations across a country already geographically stretched, the human factor is significant. This is a great example of technology making a difference for people.

Just think what further refinement of the smart home, greater utilization of M2M, and ultimately the delivery of the Internet of Things (IoT), will do.

— Robin Mersh, CEO, Broadband Forum

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About the Author(s)

Robin Mersh

Robin Mersh, Broadband Forum Chief Executive Officer, joined the Broadband Forum as Chief Operating Officer in July 2006, and was promoted to Chief Executive Officer in July 2010. Robin has held leadership positions in the telecommunications industry for over 18 years. Robin has worked in business development and alliance management for various OSS software companies in the United States, mainly in network and service provisioning and activation, where he negotiated and managed several large OEM agreements. He is originally from Cambridge in the United Kingdom. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London in 1992. His favorite movie is Barbarella (honestly!).

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