Water utilities continue to move towards remote automated meter reads to support their water billing software.  How such a solution will scale up remains to be seen.

For example, in Wisconsin the Baraboo Water Utility will begin replacing 4,578 aging residential, commercial and industrial water meters over the next few years with meters that can be read by remote control, [1] the Barbaroo News Republic reports.  Interestingly the same story states that Council is also spending $26,600 for new water billing software, thus indicating yet again that large sums of money do not need to be spent to acquire simple water billing software.  The total contract is for $1.2 million for the meters, related computer software and services.  The metering supplier is [2] H D Supply Waterworks of Sun Prairie, and the program for changing out the meters will be carried out over two-and-a-half years.  City workers will replace the old meters while a contracted management team calls residents and businesses to schedule days when workers visit them.

When installed every house and business will have a radio box and that box communicates with a central tower; all that data will go straight to the City Services Building.  The data will then be imported to the water billing software.