ALPHARETTA, GA, March 14, 2005 -- Cellnet Technology Inc. has finalized a 15-year contract to supply Water District No. 1 of Johnson County, Kan., (WaterOne) with network automated meter reading (AMR) services for about 12,000 commercial accounts across the utility's service area.
WaterOne serves roughly 130,000 residential and commercial accounts in the Kansas City metropolitan area and, based on its service boundaries, is the largest water utility in the state of Kansas. The fixed wireless radio network system will allow it to improve its operational efficiency and will reduce labor costs associated with obtaining manual meter reads. The network also allows access to customer water usage information, monthly consumption data, leak detection readings, on-request reads, and other value-added data.
With the addition of WaterOne to its existing fixed network, Cellnet has again accomplished an industry first, having all three resources being read individually under a single fixed wireless radio network that consists of nearly 700,000 endpoints. The three utilities are: WaterOne, Kansas Gas Service, and Kansas City Power & Light. "Cellnet has always been on the forefront of unique industry experiences, and we are proud to be standing shoulder to shoulder with WaterOne as we find ourselves there once again," said Ed Solar, Cellnet vice president of sales and marketing.
Under the terms of the contract, the company is responsible for managing, integrating, deploying, and providing automated meter reading services to WaterOne. This will include not only the installation of Cellnet® compatible AMR radio frequency interface units on existing water meters, but also the turnkey integration of the data collected via the Cellnet network with the utility's billing and customer information system (CIS).
According to WaterOne project manager Dan Graves, "As part of the initial planning phase of this project, we conducted an extensive evaluation of AMR systems and suppliers, including a one-year pilot study to assess both drive-by and fixed network technologies. We determined that a fixed network AMR system provided the best solution for our data collection needs and concluded that Cellnet was best positioned to provide this service to us."
The utility's general manager, Mike Armstrong agreed: "We believe this technology will provide benefits to both WaterOne and its customers, and will result in significant operational efficiencies throughout the utility."
Cellnet president and CEO Mike Zito said, "With long term contracts, our customers are partners in the truest sense of the word, and those partnerships thrive on a common vision of leadership, added value, and customer service. WaterOne definitely shares this vision and we are excited about adding them to our distinguished customer community."
WaterOne (www.waterone.org) is a quasi-municipal agency providing potable service to more than 375,000 individuals throughout Johnson County, Kansas in the Kansas City metropolitan area. Its service area includes 16 cities within service boundaries of 270 square miles. It's governed by a seven-member elected board and employs about 360 employees.
Cellnet (www.cellnet.com) is a leading provider of real-time automated meter reading (AMR) and automation solutions to the utility industry. Based in Atlanta, it supplies gas, water and electric utilities with highly reliable, field-proven products that enable them to communicate with residential and commercial and industrial (C&I) meters using wireless and IP network communications. The Cellnet InfiNetTM system combines fixed network AMR technology with wireless mesh technology to bring the most comprehensive offering-merging scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness-available in the market today.
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