Connexin Secures Up To £35M To Extend UK LoRaWAN Smart Water Meter Network

Connexin, the Hull-based operator of a LoRaWAN network for smart water metering, announced on 15 October 2026 a financing package of up to £35 million to fund the continued rollout of that network across the United Kingdom. The package combines a £10 million facility from Santander UK, a £5 million revolving trade facility, £10 million of financing from funds managed by PATRIZIA and a £10 million accordion facility, and it arrives 19 months after Connexin sold its full fibre network to CityFibre in March 2025.

A Funding Stack Built Around One Network

The package is split between £25 million of facilities and financing that are named individually and a £10 million accordion facility, an instrument that normally allows borrowing to be increased after the initial facilities are in place. The £5 million revolving trade facility is a working-capital line, which fits a business that pays for gateways and network equipment before it collects recurring connectivity fees from water companies.

Connexin was previously a broadband and wireless network provider, and the March 2025 sale of its full fibre network to CityFibre left IoT connectivity as its core business. Founder and chief executive Furqan Alamgir described the smart metering business in the announcement coverage by saying: “It is about building the data and intelligence layer for the water sector.”

Where The Installed Base Stands

In August 2025 Connexin said its LoRaWAN network connected almost 250,000 smart water meters across the UK, according to coverage in Hull Is This, and the company named Northumbrian Water, Essex & Suffolk Water, Yorkshire Water and Severn Trent Water as customers for smart water metering. The company began rolling out the network nationally in 2024, and it has stated an intention to cover the whole of the UK, a goal that depends on the pace at which water companies place meter orders during the 2025 to 2030 regulatory period.

The contract that anchors the rollout is the Northumbrian Water framework, which Kurrantly reported in July 2024 as an advanced metering infrastructure award covering more than 900,000 smart water meters across the North East of England. A later contract linked to the same network, reported by Kurrantly in November 2025, covers 330,000 Itron smart meters that Northumbrian Water will deploy by 2029 with Cyble 5 communication modules, which gives the meter volumes on the network a delivery date. In Yorkshire, Connexin and the regional network operator NYnet added 57 gateways to carry meter traffic for Yorkshire Water.

A Contested Market For LoRaWAN Metering Networks

Connexin is not the only operator building LoRaWAN capacity for UK water companies. Netmore Group holds a £200 million AMP8 contract from Severn Trent for the network serving one million meters across more than 20 counties, and it has a separate agreement with Yorkshire Water to connect 1.3 million water meters in the Yorkshire region. Several of these regional awards overlap with the customers Connexin lists, so the number of meters that ultimately report through a Connexin gateway will depend on how each water company splits coverage between suppliers.

Regulation is pushing volumes upward in either case. Smart metering is compulsory in water-stressed regions of England, and the Cunliffe Review published in July 2025 is expected to extend the requirement nationwide, which would turn a series of regional programmes into a single national procurement cycle.

Connexin has also extended the same LoRaWAN approach to local authorities, including the Southend-on-Sea network launched in April 2025 and the countywide build for Northumberland County Council, so a share of gateway capacity can serve council sensors alongside meters. That dual use matters for a lender, because the same gateway estate can earn recurring fees from several public-sector customers whose contract periods do not coincide with the water companies’ five-year regulatory cycle.

What The Money Pays For

Connexin said the facilities will support deployment and growth of its LoRaWAN-based smart water meter network, and it intends to pair connectivity with its ConnexinOS platform and business intelligence tools so that water companies receive consumption analytics as well as raw meter reads. The company framed the water sector’s pressures as scarcity, leakage and ageing infrastructure, and ConnexinOS is the layer that is meant to turn those pressures into usage data for each supplier.

The commercial case for a connectivity provider rests on recurring network fees per connected meter, and the £35 million ceiling equals roughly £140 for each of the almost 250,000 meters connected as of August 2025, a ratio that gives a reference point for how much capital the next phase of gateway and backhaul construction can absorb. The £10 million provided through PATRIZIA-managed funds also adds a long-term infrastructure investor to the company’s lender group.