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The Internet of Things (IoT) landscape is witnessing a significant milestone. LoRaWAN®, the low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) standard protocol that has quietly powered smart city initiatives, industrial IoT applications and environmental monitoring projects worldwide, has crossed a threshold that signals its arrival as a mainstream connectivity solution.

A Growing Crisis Demands Smart Solutions 

Spain loses 25% of its water to leaks¹. Portugal loses 33%². Meanwhile, Catalonia's reservoirs have reached historic lows and Portugal's Algarve region has imposed severe restrictions with dams at just 20% capacity.The Iberian Peninsula faces a growing water crisis.  

Spain has emerged as a significant adopter of Advanced Metering Infrastructure with LoRaWAN® as the leading choice of IoT connectivity, with over 647,000 LoRaWAN-enabled water meters already deployed—and the European Union (EU) is backing expansion through its Strategic Projects for Economic Recovery and Transformation (PERTE) funding program. 

The evolution of smart metering has transformed how utilities collect and manage metering and consumption data. At the heart of this digital transformation of utilities lies the wireless M-Bus (wM-Bus) protocol, a wireless communication protocol for automated meter reading that has been adopted for over 20 years through the standard defined by the European Normalization Committee (CEN) under the standard series EN13757, encompassing Europe and beyond. In this blog post, we'll explore our recent demo featuring the Semtech LR1121 and LR2021, and discuss how enabling the dual connectivity for wM-Bus and LoRaWAN® is today’s demand of utilities for Smart Metering.