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My water meter is now read by remote, it's only read 4 times a year instead of 12 times a year but the cost to have someone sent in to my house to swap out the new water meter, the cost of the water meter and the operating cost of it was going to have a pay back of less then 5 years from the savings of having someone go from house to house to read the mechanical meter, so if an electric meter is being read 3 times as often and I've seen then swap out electric meters a hand full of times, it's a big plug on the back, open up the meter box and yank the meter out of the socket, when you do this the power shuts off, this is the common way to shut off power to a house that didn't pay it's bill as well, plug your new meter in and your smart meter is installed, much quicker then going in to someones house to swap out a water meter and if my city found the pay back on electronically read water meters to be a savings at 4 readings per year I can only imagine how it would have changed at 12 readings per year.
The old meters were a big ball of clock work, not cheap to build either and you pay for them.
I'm not sure about everyone else, but after my smart meter went in I noticed my rates went down by a fraction of a cent per kwh, because as a public service provider that you don't have a choice over service rates have to reflect real cost of operations.
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