Reflecting on Lessons Learned on Digital Networks and the Next Level of Cellular Technologies from Distributech 2023: Exclusive Conversation with Nick Taluja, EVP of Global Sales and Customer Support at Sequans

During the February Distributech Conference in San Diego, one of hot topics was the development of cellular IoT connectivity for the utility industry. As recent years have ramped up the presence and importance of smart meters, sensors, distributed energy, and other nodes across the grid, the utility industry has had to reflect on what this means for the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) of today and tomorrow. This conference highlighted that fact that if companies aren’t already thinking about these topics, they risk falling behind.

Key vendors and thought leaders could be found on the conference floor highlighting their roadmaps for the future. A critical voice in this conversation is Nick Taluja, EVP of Global Sales and Customer Support at Sequans. Nick was kind enough to spend some time chatting with Energy Central to share what conversations he has been having and how current trends are reflected in Sequans’ plans now and going forward.

Matt Chester: How has the Distributech event been for the team at Sequans?

Nick Taluja: Distributech is an important show for us because all our core customers and potential customers are here. If you look at the entire metering segment, which is one of the strongest and fastest growing segments at Sequans, then Distributech is where I can meet every single one of my customers---along with the utilities companies who are our customers’ customers---all in one place. All of the decision-makers are here, and I get the chance to talk to them about what's new in cellular for the AMI industry.

 

MC: What are your key customers most interested in?

NT: We work with companies building smart meters for water, gas, and electricity, and utility providers within the entire smart city market segment. We see our customers interested in connecting more things in a more advanced way and delivering services beyond just the reading of meters. Look at some city street lighting systems today, which also provide environmental data such as temperature and humidity levels. In the utilities space, we’ve seen gas meter applications that can detect gas leaks in a home and immediately turn off the gas. Connecting that sensor that's in the house to the meter that’s outside is best done with cellular. We are going to see a lot of innovation along these lines because it creates revenue streams beyond just meter reading.

The cellular IoT connection allows for more innovative new services to be offered like this. We have one customer, for example, putting Wi-Fi along with cellular in its meters and then aggregating meter traffic from the home via various sensors, enabling services to go up to their cloud via cellular and then directly on to the city or municipality. This makes for very interesting use case possibilities, and customers are keen to talk to us about what’s coming next and how cellular connectivity can help them. 

We are also starting to see more homes with solar power and EVs, which introduces many more nodes for the electricity provider to deal with. When that happens, the questions become: how do you manage the electricity distribution? How do you manage the load sharing and the balancing? These are key questions our customers are asking that we are very much involved in answering for them, from a cellular perspective.

 

MC: You mentioned learning about what your customers and your customers’ customers want. What are you hearing at Distributech this year that is maybe different than a year or two ago?

NT: There has been a dramatic change over the last couple of years. Two years ago, I think people started talking about the need for cellular in the metering industry and you could feel everybody had the desire to move to cellular, but it did not immediately take off. At that point, the industry was predominantly run by proprietary mesh-based systems that vendors were continuing to deploy, mainly because once you are locked in with proprietary mesh, it is difficult to move.

Fast forward to today and you see a big difference in the level of interest in cellular. This year I see customers coming to me to ask about our cellular solutions, rather than me chasing them to push the need for cellular on metering infrastructure. Significant momentum is developing with the utilities where the growing interest in cellular for smart meters has today turned into a very strong demand. The utilities are done with proprietary mesh, and they want the ability to use public, regulated infrastructure, not only because of its security, scalability, and reliability, but also because it has become inexpensive.

 

MC: For the companies that you're still having to push, do you see any common thread around why they are lagging behind?

NT: The companies that are behind probably thought the future was far enough away that they could continue to kick the can down the road for a while longer. But as I mentioned things have changed dramatically and rapidly, the future is now, and today you have big utilities like San Diego Gas and Electric buying spectrum, and Anterix selling spectrum to several utilities---clear evidence that the market has shifted. I believe those lagging are now realizing their need to jump on the cellular bandwagon.

 

MC: Tell us about Next Meters and their choice of cellular?

NT: Yes, case in point, Next Meters recently selected our Monarch 2 technology to connect their utility metering solutions in North America. Next Meters is fast becoming a leading provider of utility metering equipment and they have a new line of outdoor metering products targeting municipalities and utilities companies with new smart, cellular-connected solutions. They chose our Monarch technology because of its reliability, scalability, low power consumption, and especially because of its integrated eSIM with top Common Criteria EAL5+ security rating, that allows for remote SIM provisioning and streamlined operations.  There are many more companies like Next Meters turning to cellular for their metering solutions.

 

MC: You mentioned Anterix and their strategy in providing spectrum for utilities networks. How are Sequans and Anterix working together?

NT: We have a partnership with Anterix, the largest holder of 900 MHz spectrum in the USA, and together we are bringing to market an LTE Cat 4 multiband communications module that combines 900 MHz and CBRS with public mobile operator bands in a single integrated solution. The module enables utilities to operate private LTE networks and optionally to connect to public mobile networks thereby giving them more complete control over their network operations. There is real value in this for utilities providers and it will certainly enhance the value of their private network investments.

 

MC: What advice can you give to utilities and their customers who want to move to the next step? Are there new technologies in the coming years that you’re looking to get your customers more involved with?

NT: The industry continues to deploy 4G while there is also a strong increase of interest in 5G. For the next few years there will be a lot of discussion regarding the evolution of 5G for IoT. There is a feature of 5G called RedCap, which stands for reduced capability. While 5G promises speeds of 5 to 10 Gigabits, this is not necessary for the reading of meters that don’t need even 100 kilobits. AMI companies are wondering why they should spend money on 5G when they don’t need 5G speed? This is where RedCap comes in and where we will see a lot of innovation because 5G is evolving to support massive IoT applications, including smart metering. The industry will not only be discussing RedCap, but also the coming new evolution of RedCap called enhanced RedCap or eRedCap, which will take RedCap down to the 10 Megabits per second level that is needed for utility applications. In the future, there are further enhancements planned for eRedCap, that we call feRedCap. Sequans is directly involved in this technology evolution, and we can see that 5G will follow the same path as 4G, which began with speeds of 10 to 100 megabits/second and was then scaled down to 1 megabit/second with LTE-M and NB-IoT, as needed for lower throughput IoT applications. LTE-M is what most of the utilities are using today. It will be another two to four years before we'll have something useful in 5G for utilities to deploy, but we can all rest assured that the solutions will be there and there will be an uninterrupted path to the future with technology providers like Sequans who are preparing for it.