For some years now, our European cousins have been remotely reading water meters using LoRa technology. In France, Birdz, the IoT subsidiary of Véolia is connecting over 3 million water meters to Orange's LoRa network. Today, LoRa technology is used to read water, gas and electricity meters in the rest of Canada and in over 160 countries around the world. The technology is solid and mature. In fact, Great Britain recently announced the award of the world's largest wireless water meter contract: one million water meters will be read by LoRaWAN technology!

X-TELIA has been making it possible to do the same for several years now! X-TELIA now provides a LoRa radio module, certified by Industry Canada, to read meters with an "encoded" or "pulse" interface and a secure Web platform that allows you to easily read and manage a fleet of meters from different manufacturers.

A large number of cities and municipalities of all sizes have already adopted this open, cost-effective solution.

One of the great advantages of LoRa technology for reading water meters is its low energy consumption. The module can therefore read a meter once an hour for over 20 years on a single battery , which can be easily replaced. This means that water leaks, meter faults, attempted fraud and many other problems can be quickly detected in real time, making the distribution of drinking water completely proactive.

What's more, unlike meter reading solutions from water meter manufacturers, the data belongs to the city, which can access the raw data directly, without having to use a cloud-based interface like ours. The city can therefore choose the interface it wants to use, and is never tied down by a compulsory subscription. So we're talking aboutan open solution.

If you are interested in testing this new way of reading water meters for your city, send us a request for a free pilot via the CONTACT page from our website.