Smart Water Metering in Europe and North America 5th Edition

The registration and collection of water meter data have historically constituted a highly resource-consuming manual task, requiring professional meter reading personnel to visit each individualmetering point to optically register meter consumption values on a periodical basis. Automatedmeter reading (AMR) solutions which enable wireless walk- or drive-by meter reading operationshave over the years automated the work of meter reading personnel to some extent and aretoday commonplace within water metering operations. Throughout the past two decades,advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) solutions aimed at addressing the shortcomings of AMRby instead leveraging a fixed communications network infrastructure have evolved. By enablinghigh-frequency readings of detailed meter data while also allowing for direct two-waycommunications with the utility backoffice, AMI solutions open entirely new possibilities for waterutilities to make substantial enhancements of operational efficiency, reduce non-revenue water(NRW), and greatly improve water conservation schemes. Today, the term smart metering hasbecome a buzzword within the water sector that is to be considered synonymous with theconcept of AMI.

North America today constitutes the leading market for both AMR and AMI solutions globally andhad at the end of 2025 an installed base of 98.8 million active water utility AMR and AMIendpoints, representing a penetration of around 80–85 percent. AMI accounted for 44.2 millionof the installed endpoints, equalling an AMI penetration of nearly 40 percent. Berg Insightforecasts that the number of water AMI endpoints in North America will grow at a compoundannual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.4 percent to reach 79.8 million units in 2031. Large-scaledeployments of AMI started to gain traction in the region a decade ago and have since grownsteadily with multiple projects covering more than 100,000 endpoints now completed. Today,utilities seeking to replace and upgrade their existing AMR solutions account for a substantialshare of the AMI installations through meter-park upgrades.

Europe is meanwhile the second largest market for AMR and AMI solutions and had at the endof 2025 an installed base of 91.4 million active water utility AMR and AMI endpoints, translatinginto a penetration rate of approximately 59 percent. Less mature than the North American market,Europe had in 2025 a total of 34.9 million AMI endpoints installed, representing an AMIpenetration of around 23 percent. The number is however forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 13.5percent to reach 74.7 million units in 2031. France and Spain have historically been the primarymarkets for water AMI solutions in Europe, but markets such as the UK, Italy, Scandinavia, theDACH region and the Benelux are now also emerging as major water AMI markets.

A variety of proprietary and standards-based communications technologies are used today forwater AMI deployments. In North America, proprietary RF networking platforms have completelydominated the market and accounted for as much as 89 percent of the installed base of AMIendpoints in 2025. Meanwhile, various proprietary and open-standard RF technologies basedon the EN 13757 standard accounted for roughly 39 percent of all AMI endpoints installed inEurope. The category includes Wize, which constitutes one of the most deployed technologiesfor water AMI in Europe. Other proprietary RF technologies that are not based on EN 13757accounted for about 30 percent of the European deployments. Optimised for cost-sensitive andmission-critical IoT applications, LoRaWAN and 3GPP-based LPWA technologies have becomereal contenders within the water AMI markets – particularly LTE-M in the US and LoRaWAN andNB-IoT in Europe. Emerging LPWAN technologies such as Mioty are also gaining traction inEurope, especially in Germany and largely thanks to Diehl Metering’s advocacy of thetechnology. At the end of 2025, LoRaWAN was used to connect a total of 7.0 million endpointsin Europe and this number is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 19.3 percent to reach 20.2 millionin 2031. Cellular communications meanwhile accounted for 7–9 percent of the installed base inboth regions and is also forecasted to see massive growth throughout the forecast period,primarily driven by 3GPP-based LPWA deployments.

The water AMI and AMR markets in Europe and North America are largely served by local orregional players and only a few companies such as Itron, Sensus (Xylem), Honeywell, Kamstrup,the Arad Group and the Minol-ZENNER Group have managed to establish a major presence in both regions. Sensus is today split up into two companies, with the international businessdivested from Xylem – becoming Sensus International. At the end of 2025, the top 5 water AMIendpoint vendors in North America in terms of installed base were Sensus (Xylem), BadgerMeter, Aclara (Hubbell), Neptune Technology Group (Roper Technologies) and Master Meter(Arad Group). The top 5 water AMI endpoint vendors in Europe comprised Itron, Diehl Metering,Sensus International, Veolia Connected Solutions (Veolia) and Sagemcom. The SUEZ subsidiarySUEZ Digital Solutions also constitutes a key player in the European water AMI market by havingbeen instrumental to the development and deployment of Wize technology.