99% of Oman's Water Meters Now Read Themselves. Electricity Is Stuck at 80%. Here's What It Means for Your Bill.

Remember the man with the clipboard who came to read your meter, or the "estimated" bill that turned up when he didn't? In most Omani homes he no longer comes. Your water meter almost certainly reads itself now. Your electricity meter probably does too, but about one in five still doesn't.

Key Takeaways

• 99% of water meters and 80% of electricity meters in Oman are now smart, according to the national utility regulator.
• About 97% of bills are now based on actual readings rather than guesses, and 78% of electricity payments are made electronically.
• The electricity rollout missed its deadline. The regulator had expected 100% by the end of 2025.
• Dubai finished its water meters first, but Oman has almost closed the gap.

The numbers: your meter now talks to the utility

A smart meter records how much you use and sends the reading to the utility over a communications network, so nobody has to visit. At its annual media briefing in April 2026, the Authority for Public Services Regulation (APSR), which oversees electricity and water, said the switch to smart meters had reached 99% in the water sector and 80% in the electricity sector.

The water figure has crept up since then. In June 2026, Nama Water Services told the Oman Observer that coverage was approximately 99.5%. The company said the last homes depend on site readiness and network signal. The meters send data over 4G, NB-IoT or LoRaWAN, which are low-power networks built for devices rather than phones, and the company picks whichever suits the area.

Electricity has moved a long way in a short time. The table shows how coverage grew.

The figures for 2022 to 2024 come from Nama Electricity Distribution Company's own deployment data, reported by the Oman Observer. The 2025 figure comes from the regulator. The two may not measure in exactly the same way, so read the trend as a direction rather than a precise series.

What has actually changed on your bill

The biggest change is that guessing has mostly stopped. The APSR says 97% of electricity readings and 97.71% of water readings are now actual readings, not estimates. An estimated bill could leave you paying for water you never used, or hit you with a catch-up bill months later. That should now be rare.

Paying has changed too. At the same briefing, the head of Nama Electricity Distribution said billing went from 90% digital in 2021 to 100% in 2025, and electronic payments reached 78%. In plain terms, nearly four out of five power bills are now settled through an app, a bank transfer or an online portal, not over a counter. It is part of the same shift away from cash that we tracked in Oman's 168 million digital transactions.

Prepaid meters change behaviour as well. Nama Water says prepaid customers can track their balance and spending, much like topping up a phone. Watching your balance fall day by day is one of the quickest ways to notice a dripping tap.

The honest part: the target slipped, and complaints remain

In 2024, APSR chairman Dr Mansoor Al Hinai said electricity installation would reach 70% by the end of 2024 and 100% by the end of 2025. The first milestone was beaten. The second was not. At 80%, roughly a fifth of electricity customers were still waiting when the deadline passed. A new completion date was not publicly specified.

Smart meters have not ended billing disputes either. Nama Water lists the most common complaints as high bills after a meter is replaced, leaks inside the home, weak network signal, delayed readings and disagreements over prepaid balances. A more accurate meter can mean a bigger bill if the old one was under-counting, and many households only find this out after the switch.

How Dubai did it

Dubai got there first on water. The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) said in July 2024 that it had installed over a million smart water meters, a 100% installation rate, monitored remotely every 15 minutes. DEWA credits its network investment with cutting water losses from 7.06% in 2018 to 4.6% at the end of 2023.

That is a fair benchmark, with one caveat. Dubai is a single, dense city, while Oman's utilities serve mountain villages, desert wilayats and Dhofar's long coastline, where mobile signal can be patchy. Reaching 99% on water across that terrain, about two years after Dubai, is a real achievement. The electricity gap is where Oman is clearly behind.

Who is building this, and who pays

The National Smart Meter Programme is run under the APSR, which sets the rules and targets. The meters are installed by state-owned utilities: Nama Electricity Distribution and Nama Dhofar Services for power, and Nama Water Services for water. Much of the fieldwork goes to contractors. In 2024, listed Omani firm ONEIC disclosed contracts worth about $46 million, including up to 300,000 smart electricity meters.

Much more money is coming. The APSR says the sector invested about RO 3.4 billion between 2021 and 2025, and projects RO 8.8 billion for 2026 to 2030, with RO 7 billion of that for electricity. How much will go to finishing the meter rollout was not publicly specified. For more on who runs the water network, see our explainer on the new water operations deal.

Why this matters for ordinary Omanis

If your meter is smart, your bill should now reflect what you actually used, and you can pay it from your sofa. If you are on prepaid, you can see your spending as it happens and catch a leak before it costs you. If your bill jumped after a new meter went in, check for leaks in the house first, then raise a complaint with your provider and ask to see the reading data.

If you are in the 20% still waiting for a smart electricity meter, you have every right to ask your provider when it is coming. It is one more small, everyday sign of the wider move to put Oman's services online: less queuing and less guesswork, though the job is not finished yet.