This blog is based on recent analyses of the Smart Water Metering landscape in North America and Europe, conducted by Frost & Sullivan’s Global Sustainability & Circular Economy team.
Who’s Leading the Smart Water Metering Race in North America and Europe?
As climate volatility rises and infrastructure ages, water is fast becoming one of the world’s most strained resources. Utilities across North America and Europe are under pressure to optimize networks, reduce losses, and maximize every drop. Smart water metering is emerging as the core enabler of this shift.
Strategic Imperatives Driving Smart Water Metering
- Responding to Intensifying Water Stress: Disruptive climate events and increasing droughts across North America and Europe are escalating water scarcity. Utilities must adopt advanced metering solutions to strengthen network resilience, meet conservation goals, and mitigate regulatory risk.
- Transitioning to Open Architectures: Legacy proprietary systems are proving inflexible and costly. Utilities are being driven to adopt Low-Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN), including Long Range (LoRa), LTE for Machines (LTE-M), and Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT), to ensure interoperability, scalability, and long-term infrastructure viability.
- Unlocking Value from Metering Data: Smart water meters are now central to utility digitization. The pressure to improve operational efficiency and customer engagement is compelling utilities to evolve metering from a compliance tool into a real-time, revenue-generating intelligence platform.
Growth Opportunities Emerging Now
- Network-as-a-Service (NaaS): As utilities shift to open networks, vendors offering bundled NaaS models, covering connectivity, analytics, and data management, are unlocking new recurring revenue streams with built-in flexibility.
- Dual-Protocol & AI-Enhanced Metering: Future-ready meters with dual-protocol (e.g., LoRa + M-Bus [Wireless Meter-Bus]) and embedded artificial intelligence (AI) are gaining traction, allowing utilities to improve coverage, spot leaks faster, and extend asset life.
- Smart Water Analytics Platforms: Beyond the meter, utilities are investing in platforms that combine pressure, flow, and acoustic data. These platforms power asset optimization, reduce losses, and drive better investment planning.
Companies to Action
- Xylem Sensus: Known for end-to-end metering and analytics, Xylem Sensus integrates sensors, AI, and customer engagement platforms (CEPs) to deliver network visibility, real-time decision-making, and leak reduction for large-scale utilities.
- Kamstrup: Pioneering acoustic leak detection, Kamstrup’s smart meters enable precise, early-stage identification of pipe failures, transforming preventive maintenance and reducing non-revenue water (NRW) across European water networks.
- Itron: Itron leads with flexible advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) solutions and analytics that support open LPWAN, smart billing, and holistic water network optimization, empowering utilities to scale intelligently across urban and rural areas.
Optimize Your Water Strategy!
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