Netmore, the Swedish operator that runs LoRaWAN networks for water utilities in the UK and across Europe, has finished testing a way to reach the smart meters its gateways cannot hear. The company said on 27 September that it had validated the LoRaWAN Relay feature with Itron's Cyble 5 radio module for water meters and a battery-powered relay from Abeeway, running on Netmore's network and Actility's ThingPark platform.
A relay sits near meters in hard places, such as basements, pits and metal cabinets, and passes their messages to and from the wider network. Netmore said the setup works without any change to the meters themselves, lets it manage relays remotely through its platform, and that both the relay and the Cyble 5 module are on sale now through Actility's ThingPark Market.
"Near-100% read rates across a utility's entire meter population, including the hardest-to-reach devices, is the standard our customers require," said Vadim Lyu, who leads Netmore's work with water utilities worldwide.
Why The Last Few Percent Of Meters Matter
That read-rate standard explains the effort, because a smart metering programme only pays off if nearly every meter reports. A meter that misses its readings sends a utility back to estimated bills and manual visits, and it leaves a blind spot exactly where leaks can hide. Water meters are also among the hardest devices in IoT to reach, often sitting underground in a chamber under a metal lid or deep inside a building.
Netmore has built its business on coverage at scale, and at Yorkshire Water, where it won the contract to connect 1.3 million smart meters, it designed a three-layer network of high towers, mid-level gateways and targeted indoor solutions, reaching 90% dual-gateway connectivity, according to a case study published by the SWAN Forum, a water industry group. Relays can add a cheaper fourth layer for the meters that still fall through.
A Standard Four Years In The Making
The LoRa Alliance, which develops the LoRaWAN standard, introduced the relay specification, known as TS011, in October 2022 for meters in metal closets, deep indoor spaces and underground sites. Unlike a gateway, a relay needs neither mains power nor an internet connection, and it keeps LoRaWAN's security protections intact.
The Abeeway relay used in the tests runs on three replaceable AAA lithium batteries for several years depending on traffic, according to its maker's product page, and it handles up to 15 meters. It listens on a low-power wake-up channel, collects messages from nearby meters, forwards them to the network and passes replies back.
Why Itron's Module Makes This Practical
Validation with Itron matters because the Cyble 5 already sits on a large base of meters. Itron said in 2024 that it had shipped more than 1 million Cyble 5 modules, which clip onto mechanical water meters and turn them into connected devices, with Severn Trent Water in England deploying 400,000 of them.
A utility with meters already in the field can therefore add relays where readings fail rather than swap hardware or add gateways, and it can place a relay only where the data shows a gap. That approach suits the tail end of a rollout, when most meters report well and the remaining few percent cost the most to fix.
The Wider Market Is Large
The timing suits the UK, where water companies in England and Wales plan to install around 10 million smart meters in the 2025 to 2030 regulatory period, and each of those programmes will face the same stubborn basement and pit locations. Netmore already manages more than three million smart water meters in the UK, as we noted when Denmark's Aarhus put 69,000 water meters on LoRaWAN through its network.
How Relays Compare With The Alternatives
Utilities have other ways to reach difficult meters, and each carries a cost. Adding gateways works but needs sites, power and backhaul, while cellular NB-IoT meters, such as those Brazil's Sabesp is deploying for 4.4 million water meters, push deeper indoors but tie the utility to a mobile operator's network and pricing.
Relays sit between those options: cheaper than a gateway, but another battery-powered device to install, track and eventually service. Netmore and Itron have not published the field results behind their validation, such as how much relays lifted read rates or how battery life held up at real traffic levels, so utilities will want those figures from pilots before planning relays at scale.
The Rollout Is Won In The Basement
LoRaWAN has spent years proving it can connect large meter fleets, and the question for the next wave of UK projects is less whether a network can reach most meters than what it costs to reach the last ones. A standard, off-the-shelf relay that works with meters already in service gives utilities a targeted fix for those gaps, which strengthens LoRaWAN's case against cellular in water metering.
The measure of success will be the read rates utilities report once relays reach real basements and chambers at scale. If Netmore's customers can show near-100% reads without a large bill for extra hardware, the relay will become a standard part of every water metering tender rather than a niche add-on.
