At this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, French firm Sequans is showing how Next Meters is using its Monarch 2 LTE-M and NB-IoT platform to provide the connectivity for utility metering in North America.

Next Meters’ latest outdoor metering products will allow municipalities and utility companies to take advantage of smart metering technology regardless of the life-cycle stage of their existing metering systems.

“We selected Sequans Monarch 2 because of its demonstrated live network performance in coverage and power consumption, and especially because of its integrated eSIM with top Common Criteria EAL5+ security rating,” said Adam Paul, CEO of Next Meters. “The maturity and reliability of Sequans’ technology is unsurpassed in the industry and Monarch 2 is ideal for our metering systems application.”

Louis Chuang from Sequans’ massive-IoT division added: “Next Meters is quickly becoming a leader in the utility metering market and we are pleased to support their strategy with our Monarch 2 technology.”

The Monarch 2 platform supports 5G massive IoT, delivering connectivity with low power consumption. It is a single-chip LTE-M and NB-IoT device designed for narrowband IoT applications, including meters, sensors, wearables, and other M2M and IoT devices.

Monarch 2 builds on the success of first-generation Monarch and incorporates full reuse of Monarch’s software and architecture. It including an integrated secure enclave with the certified EAL5+ security, enabling integrated eSIM.

Next Meters designs and manufactures metering products for North American markets. These are used to measure and record the consumption of water, gas and electric utilities at a home or business, or across multi-family sub-metered properties. Metering products typically include a combination of hardware such as a metering device, a method of data communication, and a cloud-based platform for data collection and reporting.

Sequans Communications develops and supplies cellular IoT connectivity, providing chips and modules for 5G and 4G massive and broadband IoT. Founded in 2003, Sequans is based in Paris, France, with offices in the USA, UK, Israel, Hong Kong, Singapore, Finland, Taiwan, South Korea and China.