The Telefonica Tech digital business holding company of the Spanish operator has announced an agreement to connect 450,000 smart meters in Spain in collaboration with Global Omnium. A total of 150,000 SIM cards with Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) technology will be installed in the smart meters to help measure the water consumption of some 3 million residential and industrial customers, said the partners.
Global Omnium currently uses the data analysis platform GOAigua to measure the consumption information of its customers and detect unusual consumption patterns, as well as possible leaks or emergency incidents such as a fall in consumption in homes with people who live alone. The smart meters will also help the company attend to incidents remotely or check consumption without having to inconvenience the customer.
The deal to use Telefonica Tech’s NB-IoT technology will allow Global Omnium plans to increase the frequency of its consumption monitoring from daily to hourly, extend the useful life of meter batteries to 12 years and expand its remote watering metering services to all clients, including those without access to communications infrastructure.
Telefonica Spain last year announced a sharp rise in the number of active internet of things (IoT) connections in the country as well as in the territorial coverage of the technology. The company reached a total of 2.6 million IoT lines at the end the first quarter of 2020, up 12.4 percent year on year, with coverage reaching 100 percent of some territories such as Madrid and Valencia in view of the high demand for the technology.
