New York City is installing wireless water meter readers.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Tuesday that all 826,000 meters will be installed by 2011, ending the practice of estimated water bills.
The meters will send readings every six hours to a network of rooftop receivers throughout the city.
The Department of Environmental Protection will then be able to bill property owners every month with their exact water usage. Eventually the usage information will be available online.
Currently, bills are based on estimates, and sent every three months.
(Source: NYC Gov / WINS)
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4 Responses
A wireless connection? Looks like the hackers are going to have a great time with this.
No, they will not be able to bill exactly every month. Just watch the kooky machines malfunction. And how are home owners like me going to be able to prove that the machines are malfunctioning?
I am a programmer, not so much a hacker. If I kow that every 6 hours these meters are uploading (I bet they are staggered in that not all meters are doing it at once!). In a short period of time the encryption can be cracked by just analyzing the packets being transmitted.
Finally they send rockets into space and it took this long to do this? why cant Con Ed, have a system where they can centrally know the amounts?