Vodafone is expecting the impending smart meter roll-out to embrace both landline and mobile technology, one of the company’s machine-to-machine (M2M) specialists told Energy Demand this week.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is reportedly keen to lever smart meter technology – and the way it communicates data to both the utilities and the end user – towards landline connections, apparently in an effort to use the existing landline infrastructure in use in most domestic households.
DECC is orchestrating a mass roll-out of smart meters to homes and businesses by 2020, that will see millions of smart meters installed across the UK. Smart meters currently use mobile technology however DECC is yet to make a decision on how the smart meters will operate as part of its mass roll out.
Mobile advocates say that the mobile-only technology is preferable for business use, as it will make it much simpler for businesses to pinpoint the location of data – for example energy use in a specific store or office.
However, speaking at a round table event in London, Tony Guerion, head of M2M at the company, said that Vodafone is fairly certain that both means of data transmission will be needed for businesses.
“The telecoms industry is puzzled by this [the debate over whether to use mobile-only or landline],” he said, adding that all businesses have diverse needs. “We are fairly certain that there will be both.”
Vodafone is hoping to see its M2M technology rolled out in around 1 million smart meters over the next few years, as part of its partnership with British Gas. The company is also working with the remaining five of the Big Six suppliers.
Meanwhile, Guerion offered reassurance that that the mobile network will be able to handle the huge increase in traffic generated by the smart meter roll out – by handling much of the volumes at low-peak times.
“For smart meters, the question is, does the data need to be viewed in real time?” he said. “The answer is, probably not. So the way to deal with the extra to traffic is to process it at a time when others are not using it as much, for example at night.”