“The Truth about Smart Meters” is on BBC Panorama tonight, and available on iPlayer now.
It’s generally very damning of the rollout of the system, saying that there are 36 million Smart Meters and 3.5 million don’t work properly or not at all.
I’d like to focus on what they say about an apparent north/south divide. In the North (Scotland and northern England), where a radio network is used to communicate with your supplier, they are saying there are significant issues with communications - with anecdotal stories from Glasgow, Derbyshire and County Durham.
Energy UK confirmed there are significant issues but, on the BBC News website, Ofgem claims there is no statistical difference between complaints in the North and South. I wonder who is correct?
The case in Glasgow was resolved by fitting a Smart Meter Hub that uses the mobile phone network. Strangely, there was no mention in the whole programme of the potential issue with using the 2G/3G mobile phone network, which presumably covers the majority of UK customers.
The deadline for phasing out 2G/3G technology is 2033, but it seems the switch off of 3G has already been started and will be mostly complete in 2024. For example, EE has already switched off 3G. Will all currently installed Smart Meters cope seamlessly with the demise of 3G?
Where I live in Edinburgh, the radio network seems fine as far as I can tell, and I had assumed living in “the North” was an advantage over the majority of UK customers - so I was very surprised to find that the issue with 2G/3G was not mentioned by Panorama. There are areas in Scotland where 2G coverage is very poor, and will rely on the current radio system.
They did not speak to Capita, who are responsible for the whole system.
