TPG lands South East Water smart meter contract for Victoria
The nation’s third largest telco has landed the 10-year Victorian deal from South East Water, part of a major smart upgrade of the state’s water meters.
The nation’s third-largest telco has outmanoeuvred its biggest competitor to land the largest smart meter rollout in Australia, over a stretch that’s tens of thousands of kilometres long.
TPG has nabbed the 10-year Victorian deal from South East Water, part of a major smart upgrade of its water meters that will remove the need for meter readers altogether.
Both TPG and Telstra had provided connectivity for the 90,000 smart meters already operated but it was the underdog that landed the ultimate contract and will connect and manage one million meters to be rolled out over the next decade.
It’s a relatively new area for the telco but one it hopes to take ownership of, said Chris Russo, TPG’s general manager enterprise and government customer sales and solutions
“It’s the start of a very big ambition of ours which is to take category leadership in water metering support from a connectivity perspective, and to really own that domain from a telco capability,” she said.
Ms Russo said TPG viewed the deal as exciting as it was a chance to be a part of the water industry’s digital transformation as well as test the limits of its network.
“The market is nascent in its level of digital adoption,” she said. “We can see it’s an industry that is rife with innovation and it’s got a lot of digital adoption to do and that’s exciting for us because we can play a part and in doing so we can really demonstrate the robust nature of our network.”
Each water meter will be fitted with a 4G sim and TPG will provide connectivity and the analytics platform that South East Water will use.
The telco will also batch test a certain number of meters for quality and assurance testing.
A digital water meter is priced between $150 and $200 depending on the type of sensors it has inside and depending on which of the three suppliers South East Water uses it comes from.
Mark Elvins, SEW’s acting general manager of digital utility, said work had already begun to replace meters across Victoria.
Each meter takes about 10 minutes to replace and can connect to the network within minutes, with its first report provided within 24 hours. From there, customers would be able to get a daily update of their water use that can be broken down into 30-minute increments.
SEW had about 42 installers who would work to replace between 800 and 900 a day, with a goal of up to 200,000 per year.
The water retailer was also looking to upskill a number of contractors who had previously worked as meter readers into its installer program.
Mr Elvins said SEW customers with digital meters had saved on average about $100 as digital meters were able to detect leaks and direct customers to call a plumber.
Some of the digital meters were also fitted with a vibration sensor, an in-house technology developed by SEW, that could detect leaks in its network.
“Through our analytics platform, we’re actually proactively identifying leaks in our network and fixing them before they burst, which is saving lots of money and lots of water,” Mr Elvins said.
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