Paris, January 25, 2023 – Sogedo, France’s 1st independent water company and 4th largest water distributor, and UnaBiz, the global leader in IoT solutions, announces a 10 year strategic partnership to enhance water conservation and better manage water consumption for communities and individuals in France.
With resources becoming increasingly scarce, utility companies and users are becoming more aware of their water consumption habits. To address this growing concern, Sogedo has partnered UnaBiz to deploy smart water meter solutions (including smart meters, water consumption sensors, pressure sensors, condition monitoring sensors, etc) powered by Sigfox 0G technology, to enable customers to better control their water consumption. This partnership will significantly digitalise the management of Sogedo’s water supply networks and enable consumption monitoring at scale.
The low-cost and energy efficient water metering solution was implemented by Sogedo in March 2016. Since then, over 22,000 devices has been deployed and over 1,000 alerts have been recorded by the water company, resulting in the detection of over 500 leaks in its customer base. The timely detection of leaks has allowed Sogedo to save over 90,000 m3 of water throughout its water distribution network, the equivalent of 30 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Near real-time monitoring of indexes and alarms has also made it possible for Sogedo to avoid more than a hundred potential pollutions due to water backflow, resulting in a direct improvement in drinking water yield.
Commenting on the milestone and partnership, Patrick Cason, Managing Director of UnaBiz in France, said, “This ten-year partnership demonstrates the relevance of UnaBiz’s IoT solutions in the utilities sector and our plans to further densify our network in France. In addition to the 0G network infrastructure, UnaBiz will also provide additional services such as multi-cloud platform, access to new IoT protocols, and additional sensors for new potential services. By putting technological innovation at the service of environmental transition, UnaBiz and Sogedo are making a lasting commitment to transform tomorrow’s world.”
For Sogedo subscribers, this partnership offers several key benefits: accurate and more timely billings that reflect user consumption patterns collected from regular remote readings. The active monitoring of asset condition such as the wear and tear of infrastructure components (meters, pipes, etc.) enable preventive maintenance of devices and water network, preventing any disruption of services and improving resource conservation.
For Sogedo, “This partnership demonstrates our desire to offer our customers services that meet their needs and current challenges. The combination of Sogedo’s expertise in Water and UnaBiz’s know-how in communication technologies bring about better operations, time-savings and the better management of precious water resources for the benefit of the community,” said Julien Siffert, Expert fro remote control solutions at Sogedo.
Sogedo is the leading independent water and wastewater company based in Lyon, France with over 325 employees. With this new agreement, the water company plans to double the number of subscribers benefiting from this remote reading technology by 2024.
