- The largest LoRa® connected-object deployment in France
Fully dedicated to developing innovative and largely digital services, Nova Veolia and its subsidiary Birdz, a pioneer in the remote metering of energy consumption for Smart Cities, have chosen Orange Business to help them digitalize Veolia’s water-related services in France. Their goal is to read more than 70% of their meters remotely by 2027.
Over 3 million water meters will be connected to Orange’s LoRa® network in France
Veolia’s IoT expert Birdz collects millions of data items daily via its intelligent water meters to help its clients (local communities, manufacturers, third parties and retail customers) reduce their energy bills and improve their services. The Birdz solutions allow customers to visualize and predict their consumption and detect atypical consumption (e.g.: water leaks) and instances of fraud.
Following a 12-month trial period in Toulouse, Birdz has chosen the Orange LoRa® network, an innovative and sustainable technology with high-quality service, to connect over 3 million intelligent water meters in France over the next 10 years. The LoRa® network, which is an industry standard and has been deployed by many operators worldwide, will allow Birdz to focus on their core business and develop new services.
The Orange LoRa® network covers over 30,000 municipalities and 95% of the population of Metropolitan France. This low-frequency radio network for connected objects consumes little energy and is affordable. Easy to deploy, it is ideal for intelligent meters, which are often located in hard-to-access environments, such as building basements or within meter access hatches.
Beyond connectivity, Birdz will also rely on Live Objects, the object and data management platform of Orange Business, to collect the mass of information from the meters.
A common goal: Make IoT available to cities, communities and citizens
Veolia, Birdz and Orange Business share a common ambition to promote the development of connected and intelligent services to optimize the management and consumption of resources and energy in cities.
Frédéric Van Heems, CEO of Veolia Water France, stated“This project with Orange Business illustrates Veolia’s goal to digitalize our businesses and services. It is a true growth driver that will allow us to optimize our methods and performance, and also to propose new services to our customers, in line with their expectations for efficiency, interoperability, and transparency.”
Xavier Mathieu, CEO of Birdz, added: “Birdz has chosen Orange Business to help it make a strategic shift from a technology requiring deployment of a radio network infrastructure to a solution that is open, interoperable and reversible and also a solution which meets the needs of our customers.”
With more than 2,000 IoT and data experts, 1,300 cybersecurity experts and teams throughout France, Orange Business is close to local communities. It is aware of their energy needs, consumption and their challenges. This makes Orange Business the first trusted partner.
Helmut Reisinger, CEO of Orange Business, added: “We are proud to help Veolia and Birdz with this major project. Orange Business provides many companies with support on projects regarding IoT, data collection, transport, storage, and analysis, guaranteeing a high level of security. Our multi-technology strategy, which includes LoRa®, 2G/3G/4G, and LTE-M, allows us to meet each sector’s specific needs. Already a leader in France, our goal is to become the IoT leader in Europe, and more broadly, to strengthen our position as an operator-integrator worldwide.”