VIDEO: Vodafone flexes IoT muscle in water utility space

March 1, 2018

Telecommunications giant Vodafone is eyeing up the water utility market as its next big target to deploy internet of things based technology...

Tom Freyberg

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Telecommunications company Vodafone is now trialling NarrowBand-Internet of Things (IoT) technology with water utilities in Spain, Japan and Australia...(music: BenSound)

LONDON, England - Telecommunications giant Vodafone is eyeing up the water utility market as its next big target to deploy internet of things (IoT) based technology.

The company has been working with utilities to test out its NarrowBand-IoT solution to help connect water infrastructure and gather more data to help improve daily operations.

Speaking to WWi magazine on the side-lines of the World Water Tech Summit in London, Adam Armer, IoT global business development & innovation manager at Vodafone, said: “There is a change here [in the water market]. We have new technologies coming into the field which will change how the water industry is going to manage itself, how it will address customers and how it will be more efficient with the resources that it has.”

While Vodafone has built up experience with utilities in the electricity and oil and gas markets, with 10 million connections, it is now ready to roll out new IoT networks dedicated to the water market.

Armer added: “This new network is really going to change the way that networks can monitor devices in the field, whether that is smart meters or flow meters, or environmental sensors.”

As well as working with Victorian government utility South East Water in Australia, Vodafone originally started working with Kurita Water Industries in Japan.

Since the 1990s, Kurita started to deploy its S.sensing system to monitor water treatment data remotely, controlling chemical dosing in real-time according to changes in water quality.

Then in 2013 Vodafone IoT partnered with Toshiba to work with Kurita. A secure system was then developed that could “digitally check water conditions in real-time, anywhere in the world”, according to Vodafone.

Meanwhile in Spain, Vodafone has been working with Aguas de Valencia and most recently utility EMASESA, which supplies water to one million people in the city of Seville and surrounding areas.

Carmelo García Santana, innovation manager at told WW: “Smart water means two things: getting data more frequently with a lot of parameters and converting this data into intelligence.

“Vodafone is now offering a tech based on NB-IoT, which is going to be a reference in the smart metering sector. It’s optimised for route consumption and low energy. We conducted a test in Seville and the results have been satisfactory for us. We are interested in turning this into a bigger deployment.”

The developments from Vodafone demonstrate how telecommunication and new, software-based companies are entering the global water utility market.

Another example is Chinese firm Huawei, which is working in South Africa to deploy its NB-IoT solution as part of a smart meter trial.

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About the Author

Tom Freyberg

Tom Freyberg is an experienced environmental journalist, having worked across a variety of business-to-business titles. Since joining Pennwell in 2010, he has been influential in developing international partnerships for the water brand and has overseen digital developments, including 360 degree video case studies. He has interviewed high level figures, including NYSE CEO’s and Environmental Ministers. A known figure in the global water industry, Tom has chaired and spoken at conferences around the world, from Helsinki, to London and Singapore. An English graduate from Exeter University, Tom completed his PMA journalism training in London.