Not Boring deep dive: Meter, the internet utility

In January 2025, Packy McCormick published the longest deep dive in Not Boring's history — around 100 pages — on Meter, arguing that the vertically integrated networking company can become "the last networking company" and potentially one of the most valuable companies in the world.

• Mission: Meter builds internet infrastructure — hardware, software and operations — to make internet, networking and WiFi as ubiquitous and effortless as water or electricity in a building. Brothers Sunil and Anil Varanasi have been building quietly on this for around a decade.
• Vertical integration: Meter designs and builds its own hardware (switches, security appliances, wireless and cellular access points), software (OS, firmware, Connect, Command) and runs operations from design through installation and ongoing support, keeping hardware, software and data pipelines on a single plane so advantages compound.
• Business model: Rather than selling hardware, Meter sells a working network for one monthly fee, buying out customers' existing hardware, replacing it free of charge and refreshing it over time to consolidate on a single codebase. The essay cites one customer looking at a contract priced north of $100m over five years from an incumbent, saving around 50% with Meter.
• Products: Connect, an ISP marketplace; Cellular, in-building cellular claimed to cost 5x less to install, manage and support than DAS solutions; and Command, natural-language network management built on Meter's own data — a task such as configuring an access point for a crowded event reportedly dropping from around 45 minutes to 5 seconds.
• Competition: Meter competes head-to-head with incumbents including Cisco (Meraki), HPE/Aruba, Juniper, Arista, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet and Ruckus, whose hardware-centric business models and entrenched distribution leave them hard to respond with.
• Data centre and AI: Meter planned to enter the data centre market in 2025 using the same architecture across campus, edge and data centre networking, and is building a foundation model for networking to automate network design, configuration and management — its route to autonomous networks.
• Scale today: The essay puts Meter at double-digit millions in revenue, expecting to 5x that year, double-digit millions raised, and a team of around 100 heading towards triple digits — still tiny relative to Cisco, with the case that its advantages compound over time.

Read more: Not Boring — "Meter: The Internet Utility" by Packy McCormick