My power company just changed out my electric meter with a new one. The old one permitted them to read my meter wirelessly just by driving by the house - the new one actually can be pinged on demand by the power company and send back the current power draw and month to date usage over the power line. This gives them the ability to eliminate the labor necessary to prepare the monthly bill (people don't have to drive around the neighborhood, the software just pings all the meters in an area) and it also sets them up to do demand billing where they monitor my usage real time and charge me more for usage between the hours of 8AM and 6PM and lower rates in the evening when industrial demand is lower. I don't think that the demand billing aspect can be handled effectively by the wireless system.

I thought that one of RFMI's big products was remote meter reading through some type of mesh network. This new technology (reading the meter over the power line in real time) looks like it will eliminate the need for the wireless meter reading products. It literally took my power company about one minute to remove my old meter and plug the new one in.

Does anybody know what percentage of RFMI's current biz that is dependent on wireless meter reading? Unless they are making some of the equipment in this new type of meter reader, I don't see much promise for them in this market in the future.