My natural gas utility finished an AMR (automated meter reading) rollout about 2 years ago. Lots of problems scheduling reads of basement residential meters, along with increasing slip/fall and dog incidents. Rollout was quick and only involved the small "meter head", not the meter body, so most required no service interruption. That was important because any interruption would involve pilot relights so the customer would need to be home. I think the system is Itron based, and a "radio van" drives thru the neighborhood and "pings" the meters as it drives by. Before, reads were every other month with stupidly high over-estimates in between. Now we get read and billed actual usage monthly.
My electric utility is in the first year of a three year rollout (likely to become a 5 year rollout). Drivers were similar to above, but I think "time of use rates" are on the horizon and these new meters are more like mini computers than simple car-type odometers. The meter swap takes about 60 seconds, so you will see a service outage. There are several AMR systems from different vendors, mostly differentiated on the type of communication used for back-haul to the utility.
One system, the slow speed comm is based on "carrier signals" sent from the local substation using the power lines. I have that in the vac cabin in the Pocono's of PA for two years now. I don't know how often they can ping (read) my meter, but they seemed to have prior day's data when I last called them.
My home utility is going with some kind of proprietary radio system that requires them to install hundreds, if not thousands, of these "12 inch candle stick" size antenna on their wooden distribution poles. I envision they'll have a form of cellular or broadband wifi RF signal overlaying the entire service territory with the ability to ping each meter in real time. I imaging this would be a mid speed comm system, but probably way more that they need for AMR (so I could see them renting out data capacity to others, like security companies or whatnot).
The "best", but most expensive, AMR system seems to be based on the existing cellular and future 5G wireless tech. The problem here is that the tech is so quickly evolving that the local utilities are not ready to mingle their "customer cash registers" with this uncertain comm system. Even more likely is that the old school utilities don't want to lock themselves into comm and hardware contracts, and effectively turn their "customer billing" over to someone else (like Verizon, ATT, or Sprint).
I have been out of this business for 20 years, and it was all R&D back then. But I did call, back in Feb, to get on the list for early meter swaps, and they were delighted that I wanted one. Three weeks later I noticed my clocks blinking and then saw the new meter on the side of the house. I now get monthly actual reads, but they are behind on their web designs and I have very little of the promised extra visibility of my daily usage. I suspect when they work out the kinks they'll want me to forgo my paper billing in exchange for the full monte. I also learned by watching a YouTube contributor that these AMR meters have a small motor-contactor inside, implying that a "disconnect" could now be performed remotely. Lets see how that little Easter Egg comes into use in the future.
Hope this was helpful. I don't buy into a lot of the internet conspiracy on RF radiation. The RF output is in line with our cell phones, and even my refrigerator is now appearing on my router list as a wifi hotspot. Plus my RF exposure limits were probably well exceeded during my Ham Radio days. Times change, pick your fights.
