We are in talks to build one for a local power utility. These are cheaper for nice-to-have sensors that aren't critical. Most electricity meters in Victoria use a mesh network provided through silverspring devices to collect usage readings.

I've also heard about a rural water utility using a mesh network to connect water meters together to reduce the number of times an onsite reading is required.

Telcos are already trying to compete with mesh networks by providing low bandwidth LTE-M services that are lower cost for utilities. Nokia are pushing 450connect, 450 alliance, etc as more competitors also.

There are plenty of use cases for low bandwidth systems and services. Isolated network is great when the telcos have pages too.