“The power of a mesh network is not simply that every device can communicate. It is that every connection can become a pathway, allowing electricity, water, gas, and the community itself to share one intelligent digital fabric.” – MJ Martin
One Network, Many Utilities
Canadian utilities increasingly need communications infrastructure capable of supporting electricity, water, gas, street lighting, sensors, and other municipal assets without constructing a separate network for every application. Wi-SUN Field Area Network, or FAN, offers a powerful architecture for accomplishing exactly that.
In Canada, the 902 to 928 MHz licence-exempt band can support digital transmission systems subject to Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada requirements under RSS-247. This spectrum is already identified by ISED as being used for utility and other wide-area IoT applications. (ISED Canada)
A Network That Builds Its Own Roads
The easiest way to understand Wi-SUN mesh is to imagine a city road network. A traditional point-to-point radio system provides a device with essentially one preferred road toward its destination. A mesh creates intersections, alternate streets, and multiple possible routes.
Powered devices such as electricity meters, streetlight controllers, and dedicated network nodes can become routers. A packet may therefore travel meter to meter, streetlight to meter, or through several other nodes before reaching the border router. If conditions change, the network can select another path. Wi-SUN identifies this cooperative routing capability as one of the principal advantages of wireless mesh networks. (Wi-SUN Alliance)
Bringing Water and Gas Into the Mesh
Water and gas meters create a different challenge because they are commonly battery powered. Keeping a radio continuously awake would consume precious energy.
Wi-SUN FAN 1.1 Low Energy addresses this problem by allowing battery-powered devices to participate as Limited Function Nodes. These devices can communicate through a nearby parent router while spending much of their time conserving power. Importantly, the battery device does not normally become another relay. It is a leaf on the communications tree. The powered router carries the traffic onward. Wi-SUN FAN 1.1 Low Energy is specifically intended for applications such as water and gas metering, with battery lifetimes potentially extending from 10 to 20 years. (Wi-SUN Alliance)
An electric meter outside a Canadian home could therefore provide the powered mesh connection through which water or gas information travels toward the network. A smart streetlight luminaire equipped with a Wi-SUN router can perform a similar function.
The Gateway Becomes an Interchange
At the edge of the mesh sits the border router or gateway. Think of it as a major highway interchange. Individual roads may carry electricity, water, gas, lighting, or sensor traffic, but the interchange moves them toward the appropriate enterprise systems.
Wi-SUN provides secure, standards-based IPv6 communications rather than restricting the network to one utility commodity. The same infrastructure can consequently support meters, streetlights, distribution equipment, EV infrastructure, and municipal IoT devices when the applications, security architecture, and head-end systems are designed accordingly. (Wi-SUN Alliance)
Why This Matters for Canada
The strategic opportunity is infrastructure leverage. Instead of thinking about three separate AMI networks for electricity, water, and gas, Canadian utilities can increasingly contemplate a common communications fabric supporting all three. In April 2026, Wi-SUN FAN was published as international standard ISO/IEC/IEEE 32857:2026, further strengthening the technology’s standards-based foundation. (ISO)
Questions to Ponder
The important questions are therefore bigger than meter reading.
* Should an electric AMI network become the communications backbone for water and gas?
* Could municipal streetlights strengthen coverage in neighbourhoods with poor meter density?
* Who should own, secure, operate, and finance a shared multi-utility network?
* Most importantly, should Canada’s next AMI investments be considered meter-reading systems, or communications platforms capable of supporting applications that have not even been invented yet?
About the Author:
Michael Martin is the Vice President of Technology with Metercor Inc., a Smart Meter, IoT, and Smart City systems integrator based in Canada. He has more than 40 years of experience in systems design for applications that use broadband networks, optical fibre, wireless, and digital communications technologies. He is a business and technology consultant. He was a senior executive consultant for 15 years with IBM, where he worked in the GBS Global Center of Competency for Energy and Utilities and the GTS Global Center of Excellence for Energy and Utilities. He is a founding partner and President of MICAN Communications and before that was President of Comlink Systems Limited and Ensat Broadcast Services, Inc., both divisions of Cygnal Technologies Corporation (CYN: TSX).
Martin served on the Board of Directors for TeraGo Inc (TGO: TSX) and on the Board of Directors for Avante Logixx Inc. (XX: TSX.V). He has served as a Member, SCC ISO-IEC JTC 1/SC-41 – Internet of Things and related technologies, ISO – International Organization for Standardization, and as a member of the NIST SP 500-325 Fog Computing Conceptual Model, National Institute of Standards and Technology. He served on the Board of Governors of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) [now Ontario Tech University] and on the Board of Advisers of five different Colleges in Ontario – Centennial College, Humber College, George Brown College, Durham College, Ryerson Polytechnic University [now Toronto Metropolitan University]. For 16 years he served on the Board of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), Toronto Section.
He holds three master’s degrees – in business (MBA), communication (MA), and education (MEd). As well, he has three undergraduate diplomas and seven major certifications in business, computer programming, internetworking, project management, media, photography, and communication technology. He has completed over 80 next generation MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) [aka Micro Learning] continuous education programs in a wide variety of topics, including: Economics, Python Programming, Internet of Things, Cloud, Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive systems, Blockchain, Agile, Power BI, Big Data, Design Thinking, Security, Indigenous Canada awareness, and more.
Martin is a volunteer, a photographer, a learner, a technologist, a philosophizer, and a romantic optimist.