Most MSOs and mobile operators have been investing into the research and development of smart home solution for their end customers. Research has shown that although this segment is growing, it is still short of creating a large impact to the ARPU. In particular, there is a clear service and product gap (hence opportunity) in using the large air-conditioners installed base as the market entry point for smart home. This document intends to highlight a different perspective in the go-to-market strategy for this growing smart living segment.

1. Why MSOs and MVNOs
should take control of air
conditioning and bring home
energy management
Please visit to MWC Shanghai 2015
Hall 4, Stand W4.F52

2. Why MSOs and MVNOs should take control of air
conditioning and bring home energy management
Most MSOs and mobile operators have been investing into the research and development
of smart home solution for their end customers. Research has shown that although this
segment is growing, it is still short of creating a large impact to the ARPU. In particular, there
is a clear service and product gap (hence opportunity) in using the large air-conditioners
installed base as the market entry point for smart home. This document intends to highlight
a different perspective in the go-to-market strategy for this growing smart living segment.
Why air conditioning should be adopted as a smart home strategy? The answer is straight
forward, this is the single home appliance item that many residential household will have
for home comfort and one that is generally not well connected to any network services. In
developed economies and emerging markets alike, the demand of new installation of air
conditioners are experiencing high growth. According to a TopTen1
report, over 110 million
units of new air conditioners will be installed annually by 2020 in Europe – and over 50% of
these will be in Spain, Italy, France and Greece.
In Hong Kong, the Environment Bureau has indicated that 34% of the energy consumed
in residential sector are from air conditioning. Meanwhile in Taiwan, a university research
report has published their ndings on how it is possible to achieve energy saving and relieve
the demand of electricity and hence reduce the carbon footprint by remote controlling and
programming the air conditioners via smart network services using infrared controllers (Wu
et al, 2014).
The need for controlling the use of air-conditioners has been largely unexploited (untapped
market) but could easily be exploited in a massive scale if MSO and MNVO operators could
develop universal access to the various brands and manufacturer of air conditioners. In
North America, most of these could be done with central heating and air conditioning using
the thermostat and hence sparking off the innovations around smart thermostats like NEST
and associated products in various industry standards such as ZigBee and Z-Wave.
With the advent of 4G and soon 5G networks, faster smart phones, tablets and cloud
computing, the demand for remotely controlling everything connectable in our living space
is obvious. A mobile application or user account portal could be developed by the MSO
or MVNO as a new service and allow the end customers to remotely controlled the air
conditioning at home as well as setting various pro les to save energy with a purpose-built
Bluetooth-to-IR emitting device.
1
TopTen.eu has issued a report estimating the growth of annual sales in air conditioners in Europe to be reaching
110 million units by 2020.
A spilt-type unit installed in the
backyard in UK’s suburb
Multiple spilt-type units installed at
the back of a building in HCM City
Mobile World Congress Shanghai 2015 – Special Report, Hall 4, Stand W4.F52
TP-LINK
Wi -to-IR Bridge

3. Figure adapted from GSMA Intelligence on Understanding 5G – Bandwidth and latency
requirements of case scenarios with blue dotted line showing opportunities.
At the core of all these developments, there are also WiFi and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
standards that also have great potential to become dominant standards in connecting our
appliances and devices. The business case of controlling the large installed base of air
conditioners already in the market and those ones that will be installed in the near future are
likely to give MSOs, MVNOs and even Home Automation (HA) companies an opportunity to
provide value-added services. The opportunity is available now more than ever.
Energy savings and reducing carbon foot print
In addition to offering value-added services to customers, increasing ARPU, the value
proposition of having smart air conditioner control could bring social and environmental
bene ts. A report commissioned by UK’s Building Research Management (Hitchin et al,
2015) which summaries that energy savings are possible in Europe in three major areas:
improved equipment and system ef ciency, reduced cooling loads, and more effective
operation.
Remotec has engineered and developed a microchip and cloud-based solution to provide
MSOs, mobile operators, MVNOs, home automation and IoT product developers a smart way
to gain access to remotely controlling air conditioners and also entertainment equipments
such as TVs, Set-top box, and DVD players.
It is time now to develop new product or service? Absolutely
With the advent of Internet and the huge growth potential in the Internet of Things (IoT)
market space, we believe the opportunities are now available for many types of companies to
be involved in this value-chain. Already, many of our existing customers had bene ted from
our expertise in this area and these customers came from a diverse background like homeTado
Smart Air Conditioner
controller with IR

4. security, MSO, mobile carrier, crowd funding projects and mobile app developers. They all
target their own market segment, design their innovations and develop their own service
applications. What we have learnt so far is that, the market is already here.
Case studies
TP-Link, a WLAN network device manufacturer, had just developed their rst product2
with
our RT400 microcontroller solution together with our wide coverage of infrared codes of TV,
set top boxes, other AV equipment and air-conditioners.
Tekoia SureUniversal3
is an Android mobile app that offers smartphones with an integrated
infrared blaster to remotely control TV, set top boxes and AV equipment. Having success in
creating adoption, they are now looking into including the control of air-conditioners in their
growth strategy using our cloud-based infrared code libraries.
Reference
Hitchin, R., Pout, C., & Butler, D. (2015). Realisable 10-year reductions in European energy
consumption for air conditioning. Energy and Buildings, 86, 478-491.
Matsumoto, S., & Omata, Y.(2015). Consumer Valuations of Energy Ef ciency Investments:
The case of Vietnam’s air conditioner market.
Wu, Y. C., Chen, M. J., Chang, B. S., & Tsai, M. T. (2014). A low-cost web-based infrared
remote control system for energy management of aggregated air conditioners. Energy and
Buildings, 72, 24-30.
About Remotec
Remotec Technology Limited is a technology company which had been a pioneer in smart
remote control solutions since 1990 and has now developed the state-of-the-art cloud-based,
rmware-based and microcontroller solutions to support companies around the world to
handle climate control and energy management. Remotec Technology Limited is currently
a product manufacturer for various Z-Wave home automation products and is currently
developing innovative solutions in Bluetooth Low Energy together with class leading
semiconductor company such as Qualcomm’s CSR.
Product and Service Inquiries Contact
Our company offers rmware-based, RT400 and RT500 integrated microcontroller solution
for product developers and also Remoteble cloud-based Infrared code libraries for controlling
over 90% of the air conditioners and home appliance around the world.
Daniel Chun, General Manager & EVP – Market Innovations
Remotec Technology Limited
Email: daniel_chun@remotec.com.hk Skype: djychun
Tel +852 22709211 Mobile : +852 5132 5169 China +86 13149957288
Web: www.remotec.com.hk or www.remoteble.com
For companies wishing to join the revolution in creating environmental impact, Please join as
member for CSR project http://SmartAirCon.org
This paper is written by Daniel Chun for Mobile World Congress Shanghai 2015. Please
visit our booth in association with our partner Art Group Limited at the Hong Kong
Cyberport Pavilion – Hall 4, Stand W4.F52 during July 15-17.
2
TP-LINK’s JD project http://z.jd.com/project/details/13849.html
3
Tekoia ‘s SureUniversal website http://www.Tekoia.com
Copyrights 2015 Remotec Technology Limited. #2015.6.15
Blackloud
BUZZI Power socket
with IR