IoT connectivity for smart metering: frequently asked questions
Smart metering demands reliability, low power and traceability. These are the most common questions from DSOs, retailers and installers.
Which network do I use for an electricity meter?+
NB-IoT is ideal: low power, deep indoor coverage, daily or 15-minute readings without surcharges.
What about water or gas meters in a pit?+
NB-IoT with multi-carrier SIM. Penetration into basements or pits is much better than classic 4G.
How long does a battery last on NB-IoT?+
5-10 years with PSM and eDRX tuned. We size it with you.
Do I need private APN for metering?+
Recommended for security and GDPR. Readings tied to customers are personal data.
What if a meter loses coverage?+
Multi-carrier SIMs try any available network. If no operator reaches it, consider a head-end gateway.
Do you support rollouts of 50,000 SIMs?+
Yes, bulk onboarding via API and industrial-scale shared pools.
What about Spanish CNMC rules for electricity metering?+
Our SIMs meet technical requirements. We provide a compliance brief if your customer asks.
How is billing handled at hundreds of thousands of SIMs?+
Very low minimum unit fee, shared pool or aggregated annual usage tariff.
Does it work in Portugal, France, Italy?+
Yes, European SIMs with permanent roaming. Cross-border DSOs benefit.
What is the average consumption of a smart meter?+
1-10 KB per reading. With hourly readings, monthly totals are 0.5-3 MB.
Can I monitor meter battery from the portal?+
The portal monitors SIM and network. Meter battery is reported by your metering platform.
What happens when a meter stops reporting?+
Configurable alerts per SIM or group, with webhooks to your ticketing system.
Do we need to change SIMs when 5G arrives?+
Not for metering. NB-IoT and LTE-M coexist with 5G; no sunset planned.
How do you bind a SIM to a specific meter?+
By ICCID/CRC pairs. Managed by your system; the portal exports CSVs.
Do you support PRIME or G3-PLC reading?+
Those are PLC over the power line itself; our IoT SIM only enters the picture at the data concentrator that uploads to backend.
Got a metering project under way? We size NB-IoT, private APN and SLA in one call.
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