S2 smart meters in the Northern Territory using the Arqiva network - why isn't the meter able to connect to the WAN?

I have absolutely no idea lol! Atleast the jobs booked in! =]

So are 4G comms hubs now commonly available in Scotland?

I’d like to be able to get mine working and 4G will likely be the answer with no WAN 

They are indeed available, but currently being prioritised for RTS migrations

Just following on from my previous posts, the OVO engineer came out today. He fitted the fly lead but the commissioning of the electricity meter still failed at the last hurdle. He said that 4G comms units cannot be fitted in the northern region, as currently these are only permitted/allocated for RTS migrations.

So basically, I’ve run out of options in getting a working smart meter (and EV charger installed) unless something changes higher up the chain or the regulatory landscape changes to allow 4G hubs to be fitted in situations where LRR has failed.

I know this is an OVO forum, but does anyone know of any energy supplier that will fit a 4G comms hub where LRR has failed, or am I doomed forever?

AFAIK this is a DCC decision, so you’re VERY unlikely to find any other supplier who will fit the 4G Hubs at the moment.

​@localshop this is frustrating, I’m sorry to hear this.

​@Blastoise186 is correct in what he’s saying, however there’s nothing stopping you from contacting some other suppliers to see if they say any different. Let us know how you get on if you do.

!--startfragment-->

What is the timescale for replacing all the remaining RTS devices in Scotland with 4G comms hubs? How many have already been replaced and how many are still left to do? Will Ovo customers with no smart meter signal to/from the Arqiva network have to wait until *everybody* else’s RTS is replaced UK-wide, or only until just Ovo RTS customers have been provided with dual comms hubs?

Hey ​@Ovolteeny,

The switch-off for 2G and 3G networks is not scheduled until 2033, so there is still ample time to replace communication hubs for our customers. We are currently focusing on our most vulnerable customers first, specifically those who use pay as you go services and are on the Priority Services Register. Once we've ensured that these vulnerable customers have received their replacements, we will then arrange to open allocations to the broader network of customers.

I hope this helps!

So here we are, almost 6 years on from having this meter installed. Ovo had another go a couple of days ago. A very nice engineer came round to do the gas meter, but admitted that he had to get the electric meter working first. So he tried replacing the long range radio meter with a 4g model, despite having a mobile signal it still doesn’t communicate. So still no go and he went home without touching the gas meter.

It seemed to me that a possible solution was missed. The engineer had a ‘hotshoe’ that could be fitted to the gas meter, I had the impression that this would improve the comms between the gas meter and comms hub on the electric meter, a notorious weak point, but no - the hotshoe enables the gas meter to talk to the DCC without going through the electric meter hub. Since the gas meter is higher up in our house this might work - and then the electric comms hub might be able to send it’s data via the gas meter hotshoe. 

I am going to raise a complaint again to see if this new compernsation scheme will give me some comfort. 

Meanwhile in France, the solution of sending the info back down the supply wires is working fine, the whole country has a smart network and no scandals yet about security lapses. 

Hey ​@bingbongovo2021,

I'm really sorry to hear that you're still having trouble with your gas meter replacement. It's great to know that our engineering team has been putting in a lot of effort to help you out. I can totally understand how frustrating it must be when things don't go as planned, especially when the meter isn’t sending any signals, fixing that can be tricky.

While raising a complaint might not lead to a resolution since the lack of communication is somewhat out of our hands, you’re always welcome to reach out to our complaints team if you'd like. They can liaise with our engineering team to get a better understanding on what's required. 

Actually I don’t care about the gas meter, and I didn’t say the meter isn’t sending any signals. I want a working smart electricity meter and it seems to be a comms problem. If my meter (comms hub) wasn’t sending any signals then the engineer could have just installed a replacement.

Saying the lack of communication is out of Ovo’s hands, while true, is not good enough. The electricity suppliers are the customer’s only contact point and I really think they have let their customers down in not putting pressure on those responsible to sort out these problems. While the DCC and Arquiva have been publicising over optimistic firgures about the smart meter rollout I feel that the suppliers are the ones who really know how many smart meters have been installed but still have to be read manually. I would love Ovo to publish this number for their customers - it’s easy enough.

Hey ​@bingbongovo2021,

You're definitely not alone in facing challenges with a meter that isn't communicating with the wider network.

It’s totally understandable to feel frustrated, but it's important to have realistic expectations of what OVO can do regarding the DCC. They’re aware of the communication issues affecting customers, and they’re actively working on rolling out the 4G communications hub to suppliers like OVO. Plus, a Virtual Wide Area Network (VWAN) is on the way later this year! If you're interested in learning more about their efforts to support customers with non-communicating smart meters, check out the information available at How we’re working to support customers to address non-communicating smart meters.

I hope this helps 😊

Well, unbelievable, when I saw this VWAN comment I wondered if this is the mesh network that 4G meters can create/use. But no, what it means (why didn’t you just say this?) is a way of using the home broadband connection to contact the DCC. Well, Hallelujah!, someone, somewhere, saw some sense. Sending data out of the house using their telephone connection. I bet there is someone who was in a meeting 15 years ago, who is now thinking - if only they had listened to me then. How much money could have been saved in fees to hopeless Arqiva. 

Mind you of course it won’t help people who are so remote they haven’t got a broadband connection - maybe eventually someone will help those people with a meter that shoots the data back down the power supply lines. Simple, 100% coverage.

In our case I had a long conversation with a lovely person at the Ovo helpdesk, she spent a long time talking to someone (engineers?) and finally suggested that the guy who had installed the 4G meter had used the wrong ID when trying to commission the meter and wanted to send someone round to try again. OK I said. But then a chap rolled up who quite aggressively insisted that he was just there to replace the comms hub AND the electricity meter and didn’t know what I was talking about when I repeated my conversation with the help desk. He was shouting and refused to attempt to recommission the existing hub so I asked him to leave. Maybe I can get one of those VWAN things put in. I wonder how they work. If they talk to the home router then they will need recommissioning every time the home changes broadband provider since each provider gives you a new router…..

Have a think about the security implications of this. The Smart Meter Wide Area Network (SMWAN) is intended to serve just about every household in GB providing secure, encrypted data transfer. DCC makes sure that only those with proper credentials can access a meter on the network. Data transfer over the Internet via the home connection would need a high degree of discipline on the part of the customer to guarantee that no bad actor could find his way on to the SMWAN via a poorly-secured home network. DCC have been working on systems like this for many years, and it’s only in the past few months that one with an acceptable degree of security has been deployed for testing. It’s not as straightforward as you might imagine. 

There was a guy on this thread ages ago claiming tha the solution of shooting the data back down the supply wires couldn’t be implemented due to security issues, despite the fact that several countries have successfully implemented exactly this solution.

Now you say that DCC has only just worked out how to send my data down the broadband connection securely. Well great, except I have been doing transactions down my broadband with banks and financial institutions for years, so are you saying that what is secure enough for  my bank is not secure enough for my energy usage?.

You say think about the security implications. Please explain what these are. I’ve discussed this with other people who simply don’t care about letting anyone know the details of their energy usage. In quite a few homes the meters are installed so the readings can be obtained by any passerby, should they be scared?. The only issue I could envisage is someone actually remotely shutting off the supply, which would be annoying but I’d readily accept that risk to have a working smart meter. 

Your comment on the DCC spending years on working out a way of protecting their network against bad actors doesn’t make sense. For sure DCCs systems have been exposed to the internet for years, just like any other business, and they have been protected, or unprotected, again just like any other business. Basically they didn’t do it because they thought they could let arqiva and the mobile networks take the pain - until they discovered that they are unreliable partners.

The security implications I was referring to aren’t whether your data suddenly become available to some unauthorized third party. That’s pretty trivial in most cases. DCC have worked hard to keep the SMWAN entirely divorced from the Internet. They are rightly concerned that someone could hijack an insecure modem/router in someone’s house and acquire a gateway into the SMWAN, with implications for the security of what is in effect critical national infrastructure.  I think they’ve been forced to abandon their ‘no Internet ever’ stance in the face of pressure from politicians and activists to make smart metering available to even more than the 99.3% of households already covered.
  

Do you have any basis for this statement? Yes, DCC have a public-facing website, but that doesn’t mean to say that the network they’ve been managing for a decade has had any Internet connection. 

There was a brief scare a few years ago when someone found IP addresses somewhere (in their connection logs, perhaps) that were owned by the Ministry of Defence. I was contacted by an MoD official to explain that the IP addresses concerned referred to devices that had never been connected to the Internet, and gave me a completely plausible explanation for why these IP addresses had shown up where they shouldn’t have. It is quite possible to run a national communications network that is totally independent of and divorced from the public Internet.