GARYWC asked: "Isn't "...The only thing they are responsible for...is the meter itself" the same as "the public utility's
responsibility ends at...the electric meter?".


No.

What he was saying is that customer responsibility extends to
and ends where the wires from their house connect to the
pole/wires above the street. Since the only practical place
for the meter, physically, is on the residential exterior, that
is where meter reads must be done - unless that community
has migrated to wireless drive-by reads.