Re: They have a point.
Most smart meters communicate thought the power lines,
Not in the UK. The reason is that in the UK some retarded idiot in their infinite wisdom put a 3 tier regulatory regime - retail, regional franchise and grid with the meter theoretically owned by retail. Theoretically - because retail can be changed at any time by customer and thus does not want to keep meters as capital assets on their books - so it usually outsources it to a fourth entity which rents meters to different retail outfits. Additionally, retail does not WANT to give the regional franchises which own the feed even the smallest leeway. So when the original SM consultations were made, they were not allowed to compete as neutral communications provider (in a very simple way - by mandating that any comms provider operates nationwide). Thus UK ended up with an idiotic GSM based comms solution.
In the rest of the world there is no end-customer retail tier. It is all owned by the regional franchise which has to regularly reconfirm its license and rights. As a result they can and do use the feed without any issues. They also use other regional comms solutions - meshes, drive-by metering (mesh or short range radio talking to a slowly moving "collection vehicle"), etc.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
