in Barcelona
3 to 5 Nov 2026
Following Arqiva’s extension of its smart metering services agreement with Great Britain’s Data Communications Company (DCC) through to 2037, Sensus International will continue supplying the radio technology underpinning smart meter communications across the North of England and Scotland. Announced in Basingstoke on 11 November 2026, the agreement supports a network serving approximately 4 million homes and businesses in the northern region, according to Arqiva’s announcement to bond investors. Under the extended arrangement, Sensus International, the European water and thermal energy metering group sold by Xylem to AURELIUS earlier this year, will develop and manufacture a new radio base station and refresh the head-end software used to manage the fleet.
A 2013 Contract Carried Past Its Original 15-Year Horizon
The northern network dates back to the original design of the Great Britain Smart Metering Implementation Programme, when the Department of Energy and Climate Change awarded Arqiva Smart Metering Limited the Communications Service Provider contract for the North region on 23 September 2013, a 15-year agreement then valued at approximately £625 million.
The same 2013 round gave Telefónica UK Limited the Centre and South regions under two 15-year contracts worth approximately £1.5 billion combined, while Smart DCC Ltd, then part of Capita, received the 12-year DCC licence that made it the central hub between energy suppliers and meters.
The 2037 horizon now set for the northern contract follows a change of licensee at the centre of the system: Arqiva’s announcement ties the agreement to the transfer of the smart metering communication licence to DCC2 Ltd on 2 November 2026.
DCC2 Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of SECCo Ltd, the company of the Smart Energy Code, and operates under a not-for-profit model with independent governance regulated by Ofgem, replacing the Capita-owned structure that ran the platform from 2013.
FlexNet Radio And The RNI Head-End Behind 4 Million Connections
Unlike the cellular networks used in the Centre and South regions, the northern service runs on Arqiva’s long-range radio network in the 400 MHz band, built on Sensus FlexNet technology and controlled through Sensus’s Regional Network Interface (RNI) head-end system, which has been in service on the contract since 2013.
The new phase of work covers two layers of that stack: Sensus International will design and manufacture a replacement radio base station to modernise the physical network, and the RNI head-end will be refreshed to keep the system secure and serviceable as the industry moves toward national 4G and 5G communications.
Arqiva’s investor announcement links the upgrades to service continuity during that transition and places the northern network within a national DCC platform that serves approximately 39 million smart meters.
“This contract extension reflects the strength of our long-standing collaboration with Arqiva, and the expertise of our collective teams,” said Rob Gibson, General Manager UK at Sensus International, in the company’s 11 November 2026 press release.
Why A Radio Network Survives The Move To 4G
The extension runs alongside, rather than against, DCC’s shift to cellular connectivity: the DCC has selected Vodafone to build and operate a 4G IoT connectivity service for a new generation of LTE-enabled communication hubs, under a contract that can run for up to 15 years in parallel with the existing networks.
That programme is driven by the retirement of legacy mobile technology, with Ofcom expecting operators to switch off 2G and 3G networks by 2033 at the latest, a deadline that affects the cellular hubs installed in the southern regions more directly than the dedicated 400 MHz radio estate in the north.
Keeping the northern radio network in service to 2037 gives the DCC a second, independent bearer across Scotland and Northern England during the years in which millions of homes will be migrated to 4G hubs, while the new base stations reduce the operational risk of running ageing radio hardware through that period.
A Decade-Long UK Commitment Six Months After The AURELIUS Deal
The agreement comes less than six months after Xylem completed the sale of its metering business outside North America to the German investment group AURELIUS on 26 May 2026, a transaction signed on 2 October 2025 and covered by Kurrantly at closing.
AURELIUS put the carved-out business’s 2024 revenue at approximately $250 million, with a product range centred on mechanical and static water and heat meters for European utilities, and the company states that it employs more than 800 people across Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia.
For the newly independent group, the extension secures a manufacturing and software role on a network of approximately 4 million connected premises for more than a decade, alongside its core water and heat meter business.
Arqiva’s Parallel Build-Out In Water Metering
Arqiva has used the same long-range radio approach to expand into the water sector, where smart metering in England is driven by regulatory targets on leakage and per capita consumption.
In January 2025, United Utilities awarded Arqiva Limited a framework valued at £630 million to acquire, deploy, network and maintain more than 900,000 smart meters across North West England, with an initial five-year term and extension options to the end of the AMP9 regulatory period, a deal Kurrantly reported at award.
Arqiva has also extended its smart water metering network contracts with Anglian Water, so the radio infrastructure being modernised for energy meters in the north sits within a wider utility communications business that now spans energy and water.
The Base Station Rollout Sets The Pace To 2037
The next measurable step is the design, manufacture and deployment of the new Sensus base stations across Arqiva’s northern estate, together with the RNI refresh, both of which have to be completed without interrupting daily data flows from approximately 4 million connected premises.
The comparison that will frame the network’s performance through 2037 is the DCC’s national 4G migration: if the Vodafone-based service and the new LTE hubs reach scale ahead of the 2033 mobile switch-off, the northern radio network becomes a resilience layer for the north, while any delay in the cellular programme places more of the region’s metering traffic on the refreshed FlexNet infrastructure for longer.
