The Register has pretty snarky reporting that generally makes things sound worse than they are.The answer is in the third last paragraph. The bulk of the work was to get the initial smart meters installed as this often included safety checks and repositioning of meters. The upgrades to 4G/5G should require either a new SIM card, a new mobile module or, at worst, a replacement meter. But the other expensive/difficult work (recabling, resituating, etc) won't need to be done.Over the lifetime of the meters it's also considerably cheaper than having humans go round and read the meters.
John Kettlekey ● 15d