1. Project Background

NB-IoT, as an emerging internet communication technology, is a new narrow-band cellular communication – LPWAN (low-power dissipation wide area network) technology, which has advantages like wide coverage, low power consumption, low-rate, low cost, great connection and high security. It is suitable for long distance, low-rate, low power consumption and multi-terminal services, which could be applied to various applications. On June 16 in 2016, NB-IoT technological agreement was granted by 3GPP Radio Access Network (RAN) Technical Specification Group. Its accomplishment of standard work marked that NB-IoT was about to enter the commercial stage of scale.

In December of 2015, the company signed a memorandum of strategic cooperation with Huawei, initiated research and development based on smart meter products as well as a management platform for smart water data collection of NB-IoT technology. Same time for the next year, the NB-IoT smart water meter passed Huawei’s NB-IoT smart water scene interoperability test and then was tested for installation in Melbourne, Australia. In February of 2017, NB-IoT ultrasonic remote water meter was shown in the 2017 World Mobile Communications Conference, integrated with Huawei’s OceanConnect IoT platform to launch the smart meter reading business. After that, the basic functionality performance of NB-IoT smart meter was tested and certified by an overseas third-party testing agency, and then put into trial in the Australian market. In September of 2017, the NB-IoT smart meter passed through the test of function and performance held by China Telecommunication Technology Labs, which was the first to receive the certification by the labs in the country. By now, the company has developed optoelectronic, non-magnetic, and ultrasonic series of NB-IoT smart water meters, which has fully prepared the NB-IoT for large-scale commercial use.

Yingtan is the national information benefit to the people, smart city and telecommunications universal service of three national pilot cities in three countries. It is the first to build three global coverage networks, establish a fully functional mobile internet public support platform, initiate the formation of the entire internet industry chain, provide a good foundation for the successful deployment of smart water services. 

2. Project Implementation Status

Yingtan integrated the “three national pilots” of national information benefiting people, national smart city and national telecommunication universal service. In order to seize the development window period of internet and build a comprehensive mobile internet smart city of “intelligent interconnection and win-win for all” based on the development of internet, the municipal government of Yingtan formulated the “further promotion of the wisdom of the new smart city”, ensured to lay the foundation, build mechanism and advance industry while focused on building a smart manufacturing industry base and establishing a number of national leading applications with Yingtan characteristics.
In response to the call of municipal government this year, in April, the company produced the first batch of 400 units NB-IoT photoelectric internet went into practice to be installed in three districts of the East, north, South of Yingtan. After several month of operation, the daily usage of these products was maintained at 100%. The success of the small-scale pilot point of application established a foundation of a large-scale application. 

In June of 2020, during the founding congress of China Mobile Internet Industrial mobile internet of industry alliance, Yingtan municipal government further clarified the specific content of new smart city construction targets. It pointed out the plan of installing and reconstructing about 65 thousand units of narrow-band internet water meters.

Until the end of September, with the with the strong support and promotion of Yingtan municipal government and relevant departments, the company cooperated with Division of Chinese Academy of ICT, Huawei, China Telecom, China Mobile and successfully worked together to deployment of 20,608 units of NB-IoT smart meter products. The usage rate has remained above 99.2%, which fully showed that the commercial application scale of Sanchuan Smart NB-IoT smart water meter has reached the level of 10,000. It has promoted the large-scale commercial use of NB-IoT smart water meters and created the country’s first city-level benchmark for NB-IoT smart meter reading. 

Currently, the practices of the company in Yingtan has been around NB-IoT and formed a complete industrial chain – upstream are chip manufacturers and downstream are water meter module production and manufacturing enterprises.  

China Mobile, China Telecom and other wireless carriers provide the foundation of NB-IoT network. With the smooth implementation of the Yingtan project, the company will also summarize and sort out the successful experience in the project construction process and use this as a starting point to promote it to Jiangxi and even the whole country. 

At present, based on the news from domestic market, there are many domestic water suppliers have the intention of using NB-IoT smart meter products, and the demand is over 20 million units.  

3. Project Promotion Plan

1) In accordance with the established goals set by Yingtan municipal government, the production, installment and usage test of the remaining 45 thousand units of water meter products must be finished by the end of January 2018, , the production, installment and usage test of 100 thousand units of NB-IoT product in Yingtan main areas must be finished before the end of June 2018, and implementing NB-IoT smart meter fully covering the city.  

2) Integrate meter data with the water management platform of the water supply company to meet the daily management and commercial needs of those companies and combines multiple functions of mobile payment to make the water operation management platformization and the water information digitalization to ensure the operation of smart meter reading system of Yingtan.

3) Applying DMA regional measurement management and big data analysis of water affairs information to enforce intelligent water affairs management. Including functions such as data analysis of user harbits, hydrological change data analysis, regional characteristic data analysis, pipe network data analysis and etc., to effectively reduce the low rate of sales of water supply companies and improve the overall water cycle management efficiency of the city.

As the first domestic listed company with water meter as its main business, the company will take the large-scale commercial application of Yingtan NB-IoT smart water meter as an opportunity to promote product iteration and upgrade, integrate water quality information collection, water pressure sensor collection, and geographic information collection and other data as a whole to make the NB-IoT smart meter become a city basis of information collected set of terminals and advance water information technology, promote the construction of smart city, improve urban water management and efficiency, and actively enforce the corporate mission of ” using water in a scientific way and drinking water healthily”.