Dive Summary:

• French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault announced last week that ERDF, the distribution unit of national utility EDF, is ready to start the roll-out of 3 million smart meters as the nation strives to meet the European Union mandate of 100 million smart meters by 2016.
• France will install a total of 35 million smart meters by 2020 in a nationwide push estimated to cost $6.5 billion.
• Toshiba subsidiary Landis+Gyr, U.S. meter maker Itron and Slovenian metering vendor Iskraëmeco are supplying the deployment.

From the article:
“Italian utility Enel already has about 30 million smart meters deployed using technology from San Jose, Calif.-based Echelon, and Echelon’s PLC-based metering technology is also in widespread use across other parts of Europe. The U.K.’s complicated plan to deploy 50 million smart meters to all customers by 2021 is focusing on wireless connectivity, on the other hand.”