In our podcast on 31st March, we talked about Vodafone's partnership with British Gas. 'Smart meters' with a mobile GPRS data connection are expected to help nearly a million UK households manage their gas supplies by the end of 2012.
However, although these meters won't need fast mobile data, ABI Research anticipates a dramatic growth in machine-to-machine connections using 4G services. Its latest report says the number of 4G M2M modules shipped worldwide will jump from around 40,000 this year to 12.6 million in 2015.