Same with water meters. They are all smart now. The utility companies in smaller cities just drive around once a month and pick up the signal. I know in bigger cities they have special routers on the telephone poles that collect data from every house and transmit it to the department in real time. I used to live in a suburb of Detroit and was having issues with my water bill. Those fuckers knew every teaspoon of water that came into the house. I had a reverse osmosis system that they diagnosed as a running toilet. It's just a smart meter it isn't going to record your conversations or anything. Plus it's utility companies property. So you can always open up the connection box and jump some wires around or hook it up to a timer.