Blogging colleague Garrett Smith posted and interesting thought  this evening

Alarm over IP - Giving VoIP Pure Plays “Triple Play” Potential?
Alarm.com has struck another deal with a prominent Voice over IP provider to offer residential security service and Voice over IP service bundles. Fresh off a deal with Vonage, Alarm.com announced today that SunRocket will now be offering Alarm.com’s security service to its customers. Currently Alarm.com uses wireless GSM technology to send signals to their security center, but sometime this year they will be releasing an Alarm over IP offering. Other security company’s, such as former customer of mine NextAlarm.com, are already utilizing Alarm over IP technology.

Garrett speculates on a VoIP triple play threat of voice, video and alarm, but I'll actually go a bit farther. Wireline telcos have always been limited to the twisted pair. IP leaped the 64kbps channel limitation of the POTS line, using DSL, cable, hybrid fiber coax, and depending where you are in the world, optical and radio broadband technologies.

Alarm  systems are rudimentary telemetry, most often accomplished by monitoring transponders of some time. Doing this over IP is interesting, but only very briefly for me. It's data easily packetized and transmitted over IP.

That it's being done, does indeed take us well beyond the triple play. And it isn't a four play, but it is foreplay. Voice, video (broadcast, on demand, conferencing), straming music, alarm monitoring, security camera surveillance services, HVAC control of your home environnment via the web.

The electronic cottage is really not far away. Why can't your home use voice recognition software to control lighting, entertainment, telecommunications and the like. This is all achievable with technology we have right now. It doesn't scale well in some cases. The ROI model may not work yet. But it's all foreplay, tickling our senses with the new advances we'll be creating, seeing and using over the next few years.