Many cities around the world have deployed smart meters

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It is understood that smart meters have now been installed in many cities around the world. However, as the technical capabilities of smart meter manufacturers improve rapidly, there is an urgent need to upgrade these systems, and the new efficient technologies that have emerged also need to be applied to existing products. For this reason, China Mobile has introduced the Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) service to address issues such as the meter reading process and accurate billing methods. This service consists of smart meters connected to the narrowband IoT, along with a cloud-based OneNET management and application development platform. It can be deployed in public facilities, industrial parks, and smart buildings. Specifically, AMR services utilize 2G or 4G networks to collect real-time data such as voltage, current, power consumption, and other information from electricity meters. Through big data analysis, the actual power consumption of each device can be assessed, enabling the development of effective power supply strategies for a particular area. In fact, China Mobile has already taken action in the area of narrowband IoT smart meters; it has collaborated with the State Grid Electric Power Research Institute as well as provincial metrology research institutes to deploy and test such smart meters in real-world settings, achieving significant results. During the pilot phase, China Mobile tested various scenarios, including meter reading, device management, report generation, and displaying installation locations. Tests for the aforementioned scenarios have been successfully completed on all installed narrowband IoT smart meters, demonstrating that narrowband IoT technology is suitable for the operation of smart meters in the future. At the same time, Narrowband IoT coverage ensures that meters installed in different locations can be successfully connected to the network. This means that the installation location is not restricted by network coverage, making the deployment process easier, and it is also possible to install meters in concealed locations as needed. Currently, China Mobile has partnered with **China Electric Power Research Institute (CEPRI)** to deploy 200 narrowband IoT smart meters in various cities including Yingtan, Wuxi, Zhuhai, Chengdu, Chongqing, and Beijing. These 200 smart meters based on Narrowband IoT are expected to perform the same functions. Furthermore, since device management is also carried out through the OneNET platform, data and commands can be sent and received via smart meters at any time. Furthermore, compared to existing meter reading services, the installation and operation of narrowband IoT smart meters are simpler. Since there is no longer a need for maintenance and manual meter reading. Thus, costs are reduced. NB-IoT also supports frequent data transmission, which means that cities can conduct real-time data analysis quickly and detect faults such as power outages swiftly. It has been proven that, as a globally standardized technology, Narrowband IoT offers many advantages over other networks used for smart metering. For China Mobile, this means that the platform architecture is simplified, as it does not need to support proprietary protocols, making the network infrastructure easier to update and manage. It is easy to infer that, following the success of the pilot program, China Mobile will promote narrowband Internet smart meters on a wider scale, enabling power networks across the country to benefit greatly from them.