SNGPL , Sui Northern Gas Pipelines. Ltd, is checking the gas meters of customers with newly incorporated AMRs (Automatic Meter Readers) these days. We have came across one such meter and was quite amazed when we saw the person holding AMR taking the image of meter too with the equipment.
Inquired, and they said that its new equipment which support images taking too. Said that the data once gathered is put down on the server and if the customer complains about the wrong meter reading, then the image of his/her meter can be shown on request. Person also said that currently we are testing it.So, once finalized, we will print the image on the bills too. Wow!! Thats amazing. A digital Image of my meter on my bill. That’s quite a transparency.
This customer support was mentioned in Annual 2008 report of SNGPL too. About AMR report said,
Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) system for all consumers so as to accelerate the meter reading process and reduce transcription billing errors.
We weren’t able to take the image of the AMR as we didn’t had camera at that time. But it was something like this if you want to see what it was like
Just on humor front when we inquired about WAPDA, they said that after the next couple of centuries, WAPDA might think about this ;-)