Telefonica Tech, Telefonica’s digital business unit, and Contazara, Spain’s leading manufacturer of electronic meters, will deploy 130,000 smart meters for the public utility.
This first phase is the start of Canal de Isabel II’s planned total mass roll-out plan, which will see it install approximately 650,000 water meters with integrated Narrow Band IoT (NBIoT) communication over the next three years.
These devices have NBIoT connectivity, which enables greater reach and penetration of the coverage, for places such as basements, manholes or meter rooms.
The objective of Canal de Isabel II is to optimise the water supply service, protecting the water resource against inefficient consumption, and to offer a better service to its customers. Users will go from a bimonthly reading to an hourly reading, which will provide them with more information, giving them a much deeper and more accurate knowledge of their consumption.
Telefonica Tech and Contazara are partners that collaborate and develop NBIoT technology for the control and correct management of water, as well as being in charge of the supply and communications service for Canal de Isabel II.
“Canal de Isabel II’s Smart Region Plan strengthens the leadership of our public company and allows us to advance in two essential lines of our company: proximity to users, offering them more and better services and information, and sustainability, helping us to increase efficiency in the management and exploitation of our most important resource: water,” said Pascual Fernandez, CEO of Canal de Isabel II, in a statement.
“With this agreement we consolidate our position as leaders in providing NBIoT connectivity solutions, guaranteeing an open, comprehensive, scalable and secure solution with devices that make it possible and that have been fully tested in our TheThinx laboratory,” Gonzalo Martin-Villa, CEO of IoT & Big Data at Telefonica Tech, said.
Isaac Navarro, CEO of Contazara, says: “This project represents the consolidation of the strategy of mass deployment of smart water meters with NBIoT communication in Spain.”