Local Sigfox specialists have sold 7,000 smart water meters to the municipality of Parga in the northwest of Greece, and declared they expect to “scale” Sigfox-based IoT solutions for water metering in the region. The contract and the deployment is being managed by local water management specialist Constrat, which picked Sigfox as part of the connectivity solution.
Taiwan-based Unabiz, which owns the Sigfox technology, said it has so far connected 2.6 million smart meters globally, of which more than half (1.3 million) are for water monitoring. Local network operator Sigfox Hellas said it will scale the technology in the whole of Greece; Unabiz’s regional office, which covers the Middle East and Africa, plus Turkey and India, said the same. “We are poised to scale smart metering in Greece,” was the line.
The new deployment with the local water authority in Parga uses Honeywell’s MERLIN 868 HB-G3 IoT module, which supports both the low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) technology Sigfox and the Wireless Meter Bus (WMBus) protocol, an open standard for low-power metering infrastructure (AMI). Both work in unlicensed sub-GHz spectrum.
Sigfox is a sensor-to-cloud technology, like cellular and LoRaWAN; WMBus uses a star topology network with master and slave devices. Unabiz said the combination will provide “unmatched” reliability (“SLA(s) and quality of service”). It suggested the decision by Constrat about connectivity technologies was based on a “challenging field installation environment”.
Kostas Stratis, chief executive at Constrat, said: “We are thrilled to provide… smarter and more sustainable IoT solutions. By partnering with Sigfox Hellas, we aim to reshape the smart water metering landscape in Greece by bringing cost-effective metering solutions that can help Greek municipalities address the challenges of water scarcity, non-revenue water and water leakages.”
Evangelos Argyris, chief executive at Sigfox Hellas, said: “We are committed to supporting our partners and customers to deploy massive IoT projects that require high standards of reliability and sustainability, especially for water metering where longevity requirements and rollout budgets are critical… We are confident to bring smart metering to scale in Greece.”
Dharmesh Goshalia, regional director for Unabiz in the region, said: “Unabiz brings unparalleled expertise to the deployment of massive-scale utility projects on Sigfox technology. Unabiz is committed to ensuring a high standard of reliability and sustainability, crucial for metering projects, where longevity and budget considerations are critical.”
