XPost: can.internet.highspeed   
   From: Some@guy.com   
      
   Our residential meter was recently changed here in this SW-Ontario city   
   where I live.   
      
   I happened to be home so I asked the guy some questions.   
      
   He took a picture of the existing meter with some sort of   
   industrial-looking (rubber-encased) cell phone, and punched in some   
   numbers into the phone.  This was the final meter reading I guess.   
      
   Then he cut the security tag off the band that holds the meter in place   
   and placed a large plastic collar around the meter and pulled the meter   
   out of it's socket.  He then took a new meter and simply plugged it in   
   (matching the 4 prongs or contacts with their mates) before pushing it   
   into place.  Then he installed a new band and security tag.  This took   
   all of about 2 minutes.  He was walking from house to house, dressed in   
   an orange jump suit, wearing a hard hat, pulling a small hand cart   
   loaded with meters.  He puts a letter in the mailbox (I didn't read mine   
   yet) before he changes the meter.   
      
   I asked how these meters communicate their data, and he said they have a   
   low power radio transmitter that talks to neighboring meters and the   
   data gets passed along like a chain.  At some point they must have a   
   local area receiver mounted to a telephone pole or located in a phone   
   pedestal and that's where the data gets uplinked to a billing center.  I   
   asked if there would be (or could be) a small display unit inside the   
   home that could display this info in real time, but he said he didn't   
   think so - that instead you could go to a web site and look up your   
   usage that way.   
      
   The guy installing this was contracted in from a nearby town that had   
   already performed the conversion to electronic meter.  He said that his   
   residential meter was different than the one he was putting on my house   
   - the LCD display was in a different place, fewer bar codes on the   
   meter, etc.   
      
   I'm thinking that would give the utility company some great   
   IP-to-address mapping that they can re-sell to geo-ip providers.   
      
   Maybe if I encase my meter in tin foil (grounding the foil should be no   
   problem) then they'd get no data from my meter.  Hmmm...   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)