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Alvarion in smart meter pilots – where are the telcos?

Tony Chan | May 28, 2009 | 0 Comments

WiMAX gear maker Alvarion is reportedly trialing its equipment in several pilot projects, according to this report by Earth2Tech on Reuters. Alvarion vice president Ashish Sharma told Earth2Tech that the company has completed some pilot projects but did not disclose the names of the utilities involved. However, the report added that Alvarion has already sold gear to power utilities, including ICE in Costa Rica and Elro in Denmark.

What makes the report interesting is the fact that there was no mention of any telecoms operator in the service architecture, which means that utilities are investing into their own network infrastructure in order to support their smart meter deployments.

This trend highlights one of the biggest questions in smart meters, and smart grid deployments – what is the role of telecoms operators in that ecosystem? Can fixed and mobile operators play a role providing connectivity for smart meters and grids?

As discussed in our coverage of Cisco’s entry into the smart grid sector, the trend is shifting towards proprietary networks that are independent of the public network infrastructure. According to Cisco’s Dirk Schlesinger, public networks are susceptible to peaks and congestion, which can impact its ability to support the mission-critical nature of a utility network – especially when it comes to communications for the actual grid components.

On the other hand, building a dedicated network is not a small investment, both in capital spend as well as ongoing opex for utilities. Also, they will have to build up the skill sets to run and manage a completely new network.

What WiMAX offers is probably the cheapest platform for building out a support network for smart meters, all the more so because utilities typically service customers (homes) who don’t move around and are located within a restricted area.

While some utilities are no doubt building their own network, and bypassing the telecoms infrastructure, operators can still benefit from these deployment. They can help the utilities build and manage these networks. After all, they have the cell towers, and they have the expertise.

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