My Uncle is meter reader (water) in Arizona. I won’t say which city but metro PHX. The City of Tempe setup thier own wifi service to read meters. The wifi service is also free to the city of Tempe residents. I don’t have any idea what the success of the program is.
In the city my uncle works for the meter readers never have to leave thier trucks. They do a “drive-by” and get the number sent to them as they go past. Anything they can’t a signal on they manually read. So far they big probem with the system has been the batteries. They were suppose to last 5 or 10 years but they are barely getting 2. Outside of the battery issue it has greatly reduced the head count.
Smart meters will be everywhere soon enough. Companies like Clearwire and the LTE providers will go after cities for this kind of business. They are already providing a network to most places and steady revenue coupled with a promise to download power and water performance/usage at night (at lightly loaded hours) all but makes the meter reader in the same class with the california condor. These providers will be able to offer a very cheap means for reading 80 percent (my guess) of all meters out there.
I have warned my uncle that his days are numbered. He sees it too.
