CONSUMER BODY SEEKS PROBE INTO PURCHASE OF 2G/3G SMART METERS IN 4G ERA

LUCKNOW: The Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL) said that it has initiated the process for seeking the alternative options of the 4G technology available with other telecom service providers after the Vodafone whose 2G/3G GPRS network technology used in smart meters informed it that it was closing the outdated network technology, people aware of the issue said.

EESL, a central government agency, has already installed 12 lakh smart meters in various cities in UP and is in the process of installing 40 lakh more such meters. With the EESL’s admission to the smart meters running on 2G/3G technology, UP Rajya Vidyut Upbhokta Parishad president Avadhesh Kumar Verma on Wednesday met energy minister Shrikant Sharma demanding a high-level inquiry into as to why the 2G/3G meters were purchased when the 4G technology had already come.

“We, in 2019, raised the issue of the UPPCL buying smart meters with outdated 2G/3G technology sim cards when the 4G sim cards were already available,” he said in a representation to the minister. “Now, more than 6,000 smart meters consumers have already got their power connections snapped to recurrent snags in meters and this shows our apprehensions were true,” he added.

Verma demanded that all the existing 12 lakh smart meters be upgraded immediately with 4G sim cards and action be taken against officials for buying meters using obsolete technology.

EESM manager Sandip Kumar wrote a letter to the UPPCL on March 25 informing it that the Vodafone was discontinuing the 2G/3G GPRS network technology used in smart meters and assured the corporation of making alternative arrangements as a natural consequence to technological changes that kept on taking place.