At the beginning of 2015, the GSMA Mobile for Development Utilities programme (M4D Utilities), with the support of the UK Government, began working with Etisalat to explore the opportunity for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) to partner with service providers in the deployment of mobile-enabled solutions, to improve energy and water access in Nigeria, and Pakistan while growing their off-grid customer base.
This study is the last in a series of four reports and focuses on the potential for mobile-enabled water management solutions to improve utilities’ water services for piped connections in Pakistan’s urban areas. Based on desk research and field visits, the findings demonstrate the significant potential for Pakistan’s dynamic telecom sector to leverage their technology and expertise. In the short term, mobile communications services (e.g. SMS, voice) can help improve customer relationship management, while mobile money is a powerful tool for efficient billing and better repayments. In the longer term, as water utilities – Water and Sanitation Agencies (WASAs) in Pakistan – deploy consumer meters, the market opportunity will grow for MNOs to offer advanced enabling services, such as remote monitoring, to further improve their revenues and in turn, grow their number of collections.
Access to improved water sources in urban areas is stagnating. Global trends show that between 1995 and 2015, access to piped connections has remained the same – at 79 per cent of the urban population . In Pakistan, water utilities – WASAs – only partially cover the urban population and do not have the capacity to provide a reliable service. This situation leads both to unsatisfied customers and to high levels of non-revenue water (i.e. water that is not paid for, due to leakages, theft or inefficient billing). As population grows and people migrate to urban areas, poor service delivery of water to customers and utilities’ revenue losses will continue to worsen if utilities do not improve their operations.
In contrast with the unreliable water supply networks, mobile networks have become the predominant infrastructure and the ubiquity of mobile services presents a growing opportunity for water utilities in urban and peri-urban areas to improve the delivery of water, by providing communication, payment and metering solutions. Mobile-enabled smart solutions, from two-way communication services (e.g. SMS reminders, notifications between customers and the utility) to improved management of piped connections (e.g. GSM-enabled machine-to-machine remote monitoring and control of the network) and more efficient billing processes (e.g. mobile bill payment), can help WASAs tackle some of their main challenges and reduce their non-revenue water losses – which can amount up to 40 per cent or higher . Recovered revenues could, in turn, be re-invested to improve their existing networks and connect more households. Currently, approximately 39% of Pakistan’s total urban population does not have access to a piped water source and revert to non-piped improved water or non-improved water sources (6 per cent of the urban population, an increase from 3 per cent in 1990) such as unprotected wells or surface water .
Click here to read the full report, which includes our recommendations to MNOs, utilities, the government and the donor community to support the use of mobile technology for improved water service delivery in Pakistan.