Vodafone Spain and the water management company Aqualia have signed an agreement to provide Internet of Things (NB-IoT) connectivity that will allow digitalizing the entire water cycle for the next 10 years, according to an announcement made this Sunday at MWC Barcelona 2024.
The initial objective of the agreement, the amount of which has not been published, is to supply more than one million IoT connections to its water meters during the first five years of the contract. Since the deployment with Aqualia began in October 2022, Vodafone Spain has already connected more than 250,000 meters to its NB-IoT network.
Vodafone Water Metering, which is the name of the technological solution offered by Vodafone Spain, combines intelligent connection with data management to, among other things, detect fraudulent uses such as reverse flow and tampering (fraudulent manipulation of drinking water meters). ), in addition to detecting leaks in the facilities, automatically identifying leaks and analyzing consumption hour by hour to react quickly and avoid high water losses.
At a time of water stress like the current one, this tool also offers public administration management companies to adjust the amount of water needed to pump in each of the locality’s sectors to adjust the consumption and sustainability of the network. of supplies.
For their part, end consumers can know their daily consumption, be warned in case of leaks and pay accurately for the amount spent, leaving aside estimates, which will favor greater awareness of personal spending and the possibility of savings. ”It will result in better knowledge of the uses of water and its efficiency, and in greater transparency in water management. Likewise, it will contribute to improving environmental aspects and generating highly qualified technical employment,” says the teleco.
In a first stage, the solution will reach one million users and will be expanded over the next five years until the end of the period reaches three million. Daniel Barallat, director of IoT at Vodafone Spain, highlighted: “The control and correct management of water use in Spain is a constant and vitally important challenge nowadays. With this contract, we put our most cutting-edge technology at the service of Aqualia to actively contribute to the better conservation of natural resources and more efficient water management.”
This project is part of the Strategic Project for the Recovery and Economic Transformation (PERTE) of water, which aims to modernize the urban water cycle to improve its efficiency, reducing water losses in distribution systems and improving water infrastructure. sewage treatment.
The financing line provided by the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge that manages these projects amounts, in this second call, to 200 million euros. It is expected to mobilize another 1.7 billion euros of Next Generation public funds in the coming years and create around 3,500 new jobs.
