Singapore’s largest mobile operator, Singtel, announced it will deploy smart electric meters in the city state following trials of the units on its LTE-M cellular IoT network.

The operator teamed with smart meter vendor EDMI to trial and deploy the network. Singtel, which already provides M2M connectivity for EDMI’s digital electric meters in Singapore, said it is working with the company to offer IoT-driven metering services to residential, commercial and industrial customers in the second half of 2018, in line with Energy Market Authority plans.

Andrew Lim, business group MD for Singtel’s enterprise division, said: “Giving electricity suppliers real-time data on electricity consumption allows them to optimise the distribution of electricity to certain areas and times of the day especially when demand is peaking.”

Singtel’s IoT network went live in September. The operator conducted trials with more than 20 potential partners at an IoT innovation lab set up with Ericsson earlier in the year.

LTE-M is a simplified industry term for LTE Cat M1 IoT technology, one of three cellular-based low power wide area (LPWA) IoT standards established by 3GPP in its Release 13 specification (the other two being NB-IoT and EC-GSM-IoT).

The combination of smart meters with the IoT network enables the secure wireless transmission of meter readings at regular intervals to the power grid. It also allows electricity suppliers to monitor electricity consumption and forecast demand more accurately.