Eleven-X and QMC are Bringing Smart Water Meters to Canada
Technology is a great way to turn the unreliable into something trustworthy.
That’s exactly what Eleven-X is doing as the Waterloo company partners with QMC to become their wireless network provider to reinvent the smart water meter market. QMC has tapped Eleven-X to help them integrate their long-range wide area network (LoRaWAN) interface with a metering service, the first time such an integration has been made in Canada.
This new solution will launch in early 2018 and allow a smart meter to replace existing proprietary networks that can often be expensive due to their single-application purpose and inaccurate because of the age of the technology. QMC is solving this with Eleven-X’s public LoRaWAN network, a coast-to-coast low-power network that will enable the technology to be deployed across the country.
“When QMC approached us to help them reinvent the Smart Meter Market, we saw a great opportunity to help by providing a complete solution to QMC that allowed them to convert un-networked water meters into Smart Meters and get automated meter readings from them,” said Dan Mathers, President & CEO of Eleven-X
The important aspect regarding the successful deployment of a smart metering solution is the design of the network module itself. Eleven-X partners and customers can easily retrofit un-networked devices and turn them into a smart one connected to a LoRaWAN. The module is both a hardware and software offering that features stronger security as well as better connection and ease-of-use.
“Working with eleven-X allowed us to quickly develop and deliver a robust metering solution, and their network provides the coast-to-coast coverage that we needed to be able to commercialize a solution like this,” said James Easton, CEO of QMC. “This successful deployment collaboration allows us to expand our Smart Metering Solution across Canada.”
Eleven-X is a network operator that prides itself on enabling the next generation of IoT. Thier low power network is Canada’s only public country-wide network that supports the use of low-cost sensors and devices for a variety of smart city and enterprise IoT applications. The implementation of a smart meter system is another step towards the company’s goals of creating and maintaining smart ecosystems.
Both QMC and Eleven-X are members of the LoRa Alliance, a non-profit association that believes the IoT era is now.
Earlier this fall Eleven-X partnered with the University of British Columbia to create smart parking meters that could determine the overall effectiveness of disability parking spots.
