On July 12, the "14th Five-Year Plan" New Urbanization Implementation Plan was released. The "Plan" mentions the implementation of unified management of urban operation network, explore the construction of "digital twin cities", promote the application and intelligent transformation of the Internet of Things such as municipal utilities and buildings, and deploy intelligent transportation, smart grid, smart water and other sensing terminals.

For a long time, city managers have tried to use different governance methods and technologies to solve challenges such as lack of resources and traffic congestion, in order to create a harmonious and livable city. In recent years, with the iteration and application of information technology, "smart city" has continuously helped the development of smart, innovative, low-carbon and sustainable digital society with the blessing of the Internet of Things, AI, big data, cloud computing and other technologies, and has become a "good recipe" for urban management.

According to IDC's Smart City Spending Guide, China's smart city spending will reach US$30.3 billion in 2022, an expected increase of 16.8%. Looking at the world, the construction of smart cities in various countries is also accelerating.

People often use "hydropower coal" to describe the indispensable key elements of each industry in the development process, and in the field of comprehensive management of smart cities, smart meters involving residential water, electricity and gas also contain huge development space.

In recent years, with the continuous advancement of urbanization and informatization, the rapid development of modern technologies such as the Internet of Things and big data, and the encouragement and support of national policies, the intelligent construction and transformation of water, electricity, gas and heat industries have entered a stage of rapid development.

In June 2017, the General Office of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the Notice on Comprehensively Promoting the Construction and Development of the Mobile Internet of Things (NB-IoT). Among them, remote meter reading around the intelligent metering of water, electricity and gas meters has given great policy support; In January 2019, the State Administration for Market Regulation and the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development issued a document calling for strengthening the management of the "three forms" for civil use, and the superposition of these policies has accelerated the intelligent transformation of the industry.

Compared with traditional mechanical meters, smart meters have solved many pain points in the industry, such as difficult meter reading, expensive labor, leakage failure, and inability to monitor in real time, and in response to the national "water saving action" and "coal to gas" projects and meet their own information needs, downstream public utilities have strong power to replace smart meters.

In addition, with the gradual maturity of industry technology, the problems of power supply, waterproof and moisture-proof, communication and other problems have been solved, in addition, the application of Internet of Things, LAN, NB-IoT and other technologies has also reduced costs and improved efficiency, which have greatly promoted the intelligent development of the metering industry.

The construction of smart cities and the guidance of policies not only provide a commercial application environment for the development of NB-IoT, Internet of Things, big data and other technologies, but also provide perspective endorsement and policy catalyst for the transformation and upgrading of the metering industry. In the future, smart meters combined with the Internet of Things will promote smart, convenient, accurate and reliable, safe and energy-saving products will emerge to the market and accelerate the replacement of traditional meters.