M2M Connectivity Featured Article

Utility suppliers around the world are investing heavily in a variety of smart initiatives to improve customer service, reduce energy consumption and monitor their transmission or distribution networks more effectively. These companies are also engaging in other M2M activities and commonly need cost effective mobile communications that span multiple countries, and work in spotty service areas. Cellular networks are often the only available communications option.

Smart meters, next generation devices for measuring gas, electricity and water consumption, provide both consumers and utility suppliers accurate information about usage in near real time. Domestic customers typically have an in-home display linked to the meter by local wireless technology, which could be Wi-Fi or one of the low power protocols such as Zigbee or Z-wave, to monitor their own consumption.

Utilities may collect information via Wi-Fi over fixed broadband communications, but consumers will increasingly want remote access to their smart meters from their smart phones and this is where roaming comes into the equation.

Some utility suppliers are already responding to rising consumer expectations for remote access to home control systems via their smart phones or tablets. British Gas has been one of the pioneers in this space, with its Hive smart thermostat that launched in 2013, enabling remote control of heating from mobile devices over cellular. Other major utilities are under competitive pressure to follow suit since such a digital presence in the home will also help sell other commodities like electricity, gas or water.

As well as providing their customers with smart metering from mobile devices, utility suppliers are deploying remote monitoring of their own delivery networks and infrastructure, such as electricity sub stations, water pumping stations and gas pipelines.  For water utilities, monitoring quality and picking up early signs of contamination are important applications, as are measuring rate of consumption at different parts of the delivery network. For gas utilities the latest sensors can detect leaks remotely, which is helping to reduce the 15% of gas that typically escapes before reaching the consumer, at great cost to all parties. With pipelines often underground and hard to access, accurate leak detection is a huge benefit, avoiding costly drilling in the wrong places. In the case of electricity, remote monitoring of transformers, circuit breakers and other equipment can provide early warning of problems, allowing the utility to intervene with preventative maintenance before a complete failure occurs.

Mobile roaming will often be required for both customer facing and internal plant monitoring. In the customer case, utilities have yet to work out the optimum approach to communications, which presents an opportunity for operators to come in with data packages tailored to utility requirements.

Currently, major MNOs such as Telia, Vodafone (News - Alert), Telefonica and Verizon Wireless have to provide multiple SIMs or rely on roaming agreements to make sure they can supply the coverage required for smart home solutions. But in the future, in order for IoT to really go mainstream, MNOs will need to adopt a single SIM solution that covers the whole world so that utility suppliers can deploy the same embedded devices everywhere they operate.