01VISIBILITY
No clear picture of the estate
SIMs, modules, APNs, platforms and contracts live across suppliers, spreadsheets and former colleagues.
IoT · SMART METERING · GRID DEVICES
Independent adviceon the connectivitybehind every device.
We help utilities, metering operators and product manufacturers assess, design, procure and improve the connectivity behind smart meters, grid devices and connected-device fleets.
01
Independent advice
02
Senior-led delivery
03
Utility & IoT experience
04
Strategy through rollout
§01 — THE PROBLEM
Where device programmes get stuck
Bearer, module and platform decisions are locked in for the life of the asset — and they are usually made with information supplied by the people selling the SIMs, meters or hardware. We give you an independent basis for those decisions.
02COMMERCIAL
Tariffs that cannot be compared
Pooled data, per-SIM fees and platform charges differ enough that the cheapest headline rate becomes the most expensive contract.
03ARCHITECTURE
Design bought from the vendor
Architecture reflects the vendor's module and bearer range rather than your coverage, power and lifecycle constraints.
§02 — CAPABILITIES
What we do
Five disciplines that take a device programme from an unclear estate to a live, optimised, defensible rollout.
An independent, evidence-based view of how your metering and device estate connects today, where it is fragile and what to do next.
Estate mappingCoverage auditRisk registerRoadmap
§03 — METHOD
How an engagement works
01
Discover
Understand the device estate, deployment locations, traffic profiles, bearers, platforms, contracts and business objectives — and establish what is actually in the field today.
02
Assess
Identify the coverage, lifecycle, security, operational and commercial risks across the estate, and agree which of them matter most.
03
Design
Develop realistic bearer, device and platform options with whole-life costs, dependencies and trade-offs, so decisions rest on evidence rather than vendor preference.
04
Deliver
Support procurement, pilots, governance and rollout assurance until devices are live, reporting reliably and the benefits are demonstrable.
TYPICAL DELIVERABLES
Artifacts you keep
Every engagement leaves a documented, defensible basis for the decisions that follow.
- 01Device and SIM estate inventory
- 02Coverage and bearer assessment
- 03Risk register
- 04Options paper
- 05Target architecture
- 06Whole-life cost model
- 07Procurement requirements
- 08Supplier evaluation
- 09Rollout roadmap
- 10Executive recommendation
§05 — CASE STUDIES
Connectivity work, proven in the field
Three anonymised engagements — the challenge, the approach and the metric that mattered.
01Regional DNO · UK
Sunset-safe migration of 480,000 smart meters
CHALLENGE
A 2G/3G switch-off date loomed over a mixed meter estate with no consistent bearer strategy, risking stranded devices and read gaps across whole regions.
APPROACH
Sequenced the migration by cell-site sunset dates, layering cellular primary with RF-mesh fallback at the rural edge, and proving coverage on each cohort before the mast came down.
2G/3G sunsetMulti-bearerPhased rollout
99.4%
read success after switch-off
02Multi-territory utility · EU
Bounded-latency telemetry for 1.2M grid sensors
CHALLENGE
Protection and control schemes acted on the worst-case latency, not the mean — but the estate ran over a public internet path with no determinism guarantees.
APPROACH
Designed a private APN core with hybrid public reach for the rural tail, specified end-to-end latency budgets, and instrumented the path so the tail, not the average, was governed.
Private APNHybridDeterminism
< 8s
p99 telemetry latency
03Mid-size water utility · UK
SMaaS vs owned: a whole-life decision
CHALLENGE
A 95,000-device programme was being scored on the headline per-device rate, hiding the integration, switching and exit costs that would decide the lifetime bill.
APPROACH
Built a whole-life cost model against the utility's cost of capital, then wrote measurable SLAs, conformance tests and a contracted exit remedy into the chosen hybrid model.
Whole-life costExit requirementsHybrid model
18%
OPEX below capex baseline
§04 — WHO WE HELP
Situations we work in
SECTOR · UTILITIESSCALE · 100K+ DEVICESBEARER · LTE-M / NB-IoT
01 / 07
Smart meter rollout
Deploying or scaling electricity, gas, water or heat metering with predictable read rates and install economics.
SECTOR · MULTISCALE · ESTATE-WIDEDEADLINE · NETWORK SUNSET
02 / 07
2G/3G sunset & bearer migration
Moving a legacy device estate onto NB-IoT, LTE-M or 4G before the underlying network is switched off.
SECTOR · DNO / TSCALE · ASSET FLEETBEARER · HYBRID
03 / 07
Grid device enablement
Connecting substations, sensors, switchgear and DER assets so operational telemetry and control are reliable.
SECTOR · ENERGYSCALE · NATIONALLATENCY · SUB-SEC
04 / 07
EV charging & flexibility assets
Connectivity and data pathways for chargepoints, batteries and flexibility services that must respond on time.
SECTOR · OEMSCALE · PRODUCT LINELIFECYCLE · 7-10Y
05 / 07
Connected product launch
OEMs embedding cellular or LPWAN connectivity into a product and choosing bearers, SIMs and platforms for asset life.
SECTOR · ANYFOCUS · COMMERCIALOUTCOME · RE-LET
06 / 07
IoT contract renewal
Testing an incumbent MNO, MVNO or platform proposal against the market before another multi-year term.
SECTOR · CONSULTANCYFOCUS · PARTNEROUTCOME · WHITE-LABEL
07 / 07
Consultancies
Independent consultancies and integrators that need a senior connectivity partner for bearer, device or platform work outside their own bench.
§05 — OUR PLATFORM
smoc.cloud — one operational truth across every meter
A vendor-neutral Smart Metering Operations Console. It connects your existing AMI and enterprise systems into one common layer — no replacement, no data migration, no vendor lock-in.
Visit smoc.cloud01 · SEE
See the complete estate
Meters, comms, HES, MDMS, GIS and ADMS in one common operational view.
02 · UNDERSTAND
Understand what is going wrong
Correlate systems to pinpoint whether an issue sits with the meter, network, HES or upstream grid.
03 · ACT
Turn insight into action
On-demand reads, remote operations, triage, firmware campaigns and field work from one console.
04 · IMPROVE
Measure and improve
KPIs, SLA compliance and operational reporting that evidence performance rather than assume it.
§07 — FROM THE PRACTICE
Latest from the field
Commentary and updates published to the CEHG LinkedIn page — on connectivity, smart metering and the device estate.
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