Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board’s (BWSSB) ambitious
automated water meter reading project aimed at eliminating the manual
meter reading has run into rough weather due to lack of uniform mobile
connectivity across the city.
BWSSB Engineer-in-chief T Venkatraju
said, “We had brought 100 SIM cards from a company for installing them
in the automatic meters to enable them to transfer the data to the
centralised server. However, we were able to receive the readings from
just 30 per cent of the meters. Though there was no fault with the
remaining meters, they were unable to transmit the data due to lack of
connectivity. Therefore, we are planning to engage the services of a
more popular mobile phone company to see if we can get connectivity in
every corner of the city to ensure our pilot project gives the desired
results.”
The board has undertaken a pilot project to study the
feasibility of eliminating manual meter reading through the automated
meter reading technology at a cost of `3.6 crore and the Union
government had partially funded the project. The BWSSB has installed 890
special designed water meters that are capable of transmitting
minute-to-minute water meter reading to the centralised server in
selected commercial establishments in a selected area. These meters were
supposed to transmit the reading through the SIM cards that were
installed in them and the BWSSB was supposed to cross check the data
through the manual readings.
The service provider has developed a
software to update the data received from the automated water meters on
the internet. This system is also expected to help the customers track
their water consumption regularly and pay their water bills through
Internet. The BWSSB will decide on extending such services to the
remaining parts of the city if this experiment proves successful.
