Not A Telecoms Company – And That's The Point

Water utilities want hourly AMI data, but few want to become network operators. When its legacy communications arrangement neared end-of-life, WaterOne, the largest water utility in Kansas, faced that tension directly: it needed to modernize metering communications across roughly 156,800 meters without adding infrastructure, staff, or telecoms expertise.

As Brian Schade, Manager, Field Services, puts it, "We're a water utility, not a telecoms company." This case study looks at how the utility handled network responsibilities through a managed model, how its lifecycle analysis compared AMI against traditional meter reading, and what changed once hourly data became routine. It also reports performance against service commitments and shows where staff time went.

Explore the full story to see how WaterOne approached the decision and what it has done since.