Muni Wirelss and AMR

John Kelly of the Kelly Group writes about the potential for automated meter reading with Muni WiFi.

From the article:

"Automated meter reading (AMR) is often cited as one application for municipal wireless networks, since it represents a potential opportunity for cities to improve the operational efficiency and customer service of city-owned utilities by automating the manual process of sending a meter reader to every house in town every month or two.

AMR systems generally consist of three components: (1) meters to measure how much each customer uses, along with a Meter Interface Unit (MIU) to connect it to the AMR system, (2) telecommunications to transfer the data from the meter to the utility, and (3) computers and software at the utility to analyze the data and use it to bill customers.

In the future, Wi-Fi enabled MIUs could use a municipal Wi-Fi network to allow each meter to communicate directly to the utility’s central data processing center, avoiding the entire cost of establishing a telecommunications system dedicated only to AMR."