The idea is to offer utility companies a single integrated system for deploying and monitoring their metering ‘estate’ - both the comms and the metering infrastructure. This should reduce the overall operational cost and provide a better long-term framework for managing the smart metering network as it grows, has overlapping technologies and just gets more complex.

Telefonica claims the main benefits of its Connected Metering Platform are reduced operating costs, service level improvement, compliance with security policies, and the ability to adapt to utilities’ operations and business processes.

The big one though, might be what Telefonica describes as “independence from meter and communications hardware vendors”.

This recognises that the platform can become a neutral integration point, not just to different vendors’ back-end systems (for grid operations, billing, big data analysis) but also a flexible platform for integrating different access technologies such as cell, WiFi and, in the future perhaps, M2M specialist networks such as those exploiting white space spectrum.