Veolia Water and Orange are joining forces in the smart metering sector and are launching M2O City, an operator specialising in remote environmental data and water meter reading services.
Veolia Water already operates more than 200,000 water meters. The joint venture provides a complete turnkey service based on the ISM 868MHz radio network to local authorities, through their municipal agencies or agents for water services. In addition to information from water meters, this network will be able to collect data from environmental sensors (to combat noise or pollution for instance) in line with the expectations of any authorities.
Veolia Water has expertise for designing and operating networks, especially machine-to-machine (M2M). Orange has established itself as a partner for moving on to an industrial scale with M2M projects.
Veolia Water will use the water metering service provides by M2O City to improve the quality of the service provided to consumers, optimise the water service’s performance and, in this way, safeguard resources more effectively.
“Combining the expertise from both of our groups, this company is developing a new business, as a smart metering service operator benefiting sustainable towns and cities,” said Jean-Michel Herrewyn, Veolia Water’s chief executive officer.
Through their joint-venture, the two companies aim to enable as many people as possible to benefit from their remote meter metering service, helping pave the way for the emergence of a global standard for remote data collection networks. These network technologies are now available for wide-scale deployment and will make it possible to create a multi-application network able to host the services devised by environmental players.
“We are delighted to be working hand in hand with Veolia on this ambitious partnership,” said Vivek Badrinath, chief executive officer of Orange Business Services. “It is perfectly in line with our strategy: joining forces with a major business partner by providing our connectivity and information system management expertise in order to enable the emergence of new M2M services to be used as widely as possible.”
