Vodafone Spain has said it has won a €25 million deal to supply 315,000 water meters over five years to Canal de Isabel II, the local government-owned water utility in the Madrid region. Vodafone was one of four winners in the tender; it is understood, although unconfirmed, that Orange and Telefónica are also engaged variously in the supply of metering infrastructure to Canal de Isabel II, although Vodafone’s deal is considered (by Vodafone; see reference to Telefónica below) to be the largest. Canal de Isabel II has selected NB-IoT to connect its meters and infrastructure.
Canal de Isabel II is working to digitalise its water supply and management in the Community of Madrid, which surrounds the Spanish capital in the centre of the Iberian Peninsula. It will offer a remote meter reading service to more than 1.5 million customers (all six million inhabitants) in the region as part of its meter upgrade project. Vodafone said it will supply NB-IoT meters from French industrial group Sagemcom; they will make hourly readings about water consumption at each site, and issue data to the utility about patterns of usage every 24 hours.
In May, reports said Canal de Isabel II had appointed Orange and local water meter specialist Hidroconta to deploy 9,000 NB-IoT gateways to connect to 100,000-odd NB-IoT smart meters. At the start of last year (2022), Spain-based Telefónica was appointed to deploy 130,000 NB-IoT smart meters, possibly expanding to as manay as 650,000 meters over three years, to monitor water usage, wastage, and leakages. Telefónica Tech, the Spanish operator’s digital enterprise unit, has been working with local meter-maker Contazara on the NB-IoT modules.
Vodafone, with more than 5.2 million connected IoT devices in the Spanish market, said Canal de Isabel II will be in-receipt of 1,440-times more data about its water supply network than it has traditionally gained from manual meter readings every two months. The company will use the data to better understand water usage and efficiency, increase transparency in its management, and crucially save water. A statement said: “[The project will have] a significant impact both upstream in the water cycle process and on the consumer himself.”
Vodafone said it has created a new metering solution (called Vodafone Water Metering) to sell to other water management companies. It said: “The solution makes it possible to digitize the consumption measurement process of households, industries and public entities through the use of smart and connected devices [to collect and analyse water management data].” It said local authorities, in particular, will be able to better detect leaks and fraud (“fraudulent manipulation of drinking water meters”), and better manage supply-and-demand.
The new IoT solution, comprising a middleware/device manager, provides a “comprehensive service for collecting and delivering meter reading data”, said Vodafone, and suggested it positions the operator as the “reference technology partner” for water management companies looking to deliver new digital capabilities. The service offers real-time alerts about any deviation away from target SLAs, remote management tools for device configuration and policy changes, and API-based integration with legacy water systems.
Daniel Barallat, director of IoT at Vodafone Spain, commented: “Proper management and control of water use in Spain is a vitally important challenge today. We are putting our most cutting-edge technology at the service of Canal de Isabel II to actively contribute to the better conservation of natural resources and the more efficient management of Madrid’s water.”
