Veolia Water and Orange are joining forces in the smart metering sector and are launching m2o city, an operator specialized in remote environmental data and water meter reading services.

Building on the expertise of Veolia Water -which already operates over 200,000 water meters- and Orange’s expertise as a telco, the m2o cityjointventure offers as of today a complete turnkey service based on an ultralow consumption radio network* to local authorities, through their municipal agencies or agents for water services. In addition to information from water meters, this network will be able to collect data from environmental sensors (to combat noise or pollution for instance) in line with the expectations of any authorities.

The worldwide water services leader, Veolia Water joins forces with Orange, Europe’s leading telco group, to benefit from its expertise for designing and operating networks, especially Machine-to-Machine (M2M). Orange has established itself as a natural partner for moving on to an industrial scale with M2M projects. Veolia Water will use the water metering service provides by m2o city to improve the quality of the service provided to consumers, optimize the water service’s performance and in this way safeguard resources more effectively.

Through their joint-venture, Orange and Veolia Water aim to enable as many people as possible to benefit from their remote meter metering service, helping pave the way for the emergence of a global standard for remote data collection networks. These network technologies are now available for wide-scale deployment and will make it possible to create a multi-application network able to host the services devised by environmental players.

For Jean-Michel Herrewyn, Veolia Water’s Chief Executive Officer:
“Combining the expertise from both of our groups, this company is developing a new business, as a smart metering service operator benefiting sustainable towns and cities“.

Moreover, Vivek Badrinath, Chief Executive Officer of Orange Business Services, confirms that:
“We are delighted to be working hand in hand with Veolia on this ambitious partnership. It is perfectly in line with our strategy: joining forces with a major business partner by providing our connectivity and information system management expertise in order to enable the emergence of new M2M services to be used as widely as possible“.