In article ,
"Brian Gaff" writes:
I'd not worry cos all first generation smart meters are going to need to be
replaced due to the insecure data exchange used in them allowing a nasty
country to turn off everyone's leccy.
This was on the news about a week ago. GCHQ found the hole some time ago
but nobody admitted it existed till quite recently. It seems that the new
system needs new hardware to work.
The replacement of 16 million meters is goind to cost an awful lot of money
and nobody seems to have decided who will pay for it.I bet I know who will
end up paying for the monumental cock up, us!

There is no money to pay for replacing the existing (and still being
installed) SMETS1 meters, and the cost would completely wipe out the
supposed (but no longer believed) gains from smart meters. The
original intention had been to perform a firmware update, but the
security GCHQ insisted on adding to prevent hackers turning off your
supply cannot be added to smart meters currently being installed.

The advice is not to fit a smart meter now, because you may be stuck
with an insecure one which no one will pay to replace, and won't
automatically collect readings anymore if you change supplier.

Wait until SMETS2 meters are being fitted (probably in a year's time)
if you really want a smart meter for some reason.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]