The Problem

Chunghwa Telecom's gas clients needed to migrate their existing and diverse mechanical gas meter install-base to smart/intelligent meters. They wanted to create an online environment for consumers to view gas usage and billing information - in real-time.

They also needed a scalable and interoperable environment for:

And finally, they wanted to create value for the gas companies and their customers.

The Freestyle Solution

Our partner in all of this is Chunghwa Telecom (CHT), Taiwan's leading telco. Chunghwa has, with the help of Freestyle, provided the Taiwan gas market with a cloud based management solution called CHTGMS. CHTGMS provides a dedicated Graphical User Interface (GUI) per gas company allowing for individual requirements to be catered to per gas company. CHT provides dedicated secure access to the CHTGMS and remote access to gas companies assets located anywhere in Taiwan.

CHT's gas solution allows gas company to easily connect different vendor devices (interoperability) to the CHTGMS. These devices include Taiwanese and Japanese smart gas meters; real time units (RTUs) used for pipeline management and numerous sensors both commercial and residential. As gas company requirements and functionality change over time, new devices are simply added to the CHTGMS or new functionality is downloaded to deployed FME enabled devices via our applications.

In addition gas companies have (and need) the ability to deploy advanced applications. These applications are simply deployed from CHTGMS and operate in real time without the need for back-end servers or human intervention. In the past, if an event was generated from a fire/smoke or CO2 sensor, the alarm would simply forward to a back-end server or an alarm panel.

CHT's Gas Safety application operates differently. For example, an advanced application is downloaded to a controlling gateway and when an alarm is generated by a fire, smoke or CO2 sensor, the application within the gateway:

• CHTGMS provides gas usage and billing information either via each gas company GUI or via the internet and can be displayed on any number of media devices such as smart phones and tablets.
• Automatically shuts off the gas meters within the apartment.
• Turns on the apartment security camera and starts streaming live images from the apartment to relevant end-points.
• Automatically shut off the gas meters on the same floor, the floor above and below (irrespective of the type of meter).

It then sends an alarm to the CHTGMS, which then:

• Notifies the resident.
• Notifies the fire department.
• Notifies the gas company.
• If comms between the gateway and CHTGMS are interrupted, steps 1~3 occur automatically as the application running within the remote gateway is intelligent.

CHTGMS provides gas usage and billing information either via each gas company GUI or via the internet and can be displayed on any number of media devices such as smart phones and tablets.

Freestyle Delivers

Chunghwa Telecom (CHT's) end-to-end solution is entirely supplied by Freestyle.

• CHTGMS is Freestyle's M2M Switch
• Communication infrastructure – gateways, repeater and network interface cards (NICs) are all supplied by Freestyle.
• Freestyle's Microengine (FME) is the game changer here. Specific device applications are simply downloaded to the FME and in turn the FME controls and manages any device - whether the device is FME enabled or not. Advance applications such as CHT's Gas Safety application are also simply generated and down loaded to the FME providing instant intelligence at the gateway or at the end-user's device.

M2M our way means a win-win scenario for utility companies and their customers.

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