I haven't seen those meters in years (in the US, at least) For as long as I can remember living in a suburban house (since ~2008), there was a smart meter. At

I haven't seen those meters in years (in the US, at least) For as long as I can remember living in a suburban house (since ~2008), there was a smart meter. At some point it was replaced with another smart meter. Neither have I seen a person come out and manually get readings, because that seems incredibly inefficient, time consuming, and costly for the utility, so it was probably one of the first things to get automated.