Reference is made to Alfred Naudi's letter (April 3).

Our official meter reading visiting hours commence at 7.30 a.m. and we regret that the consumer was disturbed earlier. This incident occurred because our meter reader, on customer request, visited some customers in the area earlier on that particular day, a situation which resulted in Mr Naudi's residence erroneously being visited earlier.

We apologise for the inconvenience caused.

We feel it is important to clarify the status of our metering reading function vis-à-vis those customers who already have smart meters installed in their premise.

The elimination of on-field meter reading will commence in the next phase of this project, on a locality-per-locality basis. We are reviewing results obtained from a small-scale study, which was concluded at the end of January and which was based on 5,000 smart meters, and finalising a plan to ensure that we will be able to handle both on-field and remote meter reading in tandem, as effectively as possible.

In this regard we take the opportunity to encourage customers to provide access to our installers for the replacement of their old meter with a smart meter. Cooperation by our customers will enable us to permanently switch areas to remote meter reading quicker.

Apart from the elimination of on-field meter reading visits, in the near future our consumers will also benefit from the elimination of estimate bills as well as customer-convenient access to detailed consumption information through their bills and through the internet.

Live testing of remote reading will commence in a few weeks time. We will be advising all relevant customers through a letter as soon as this process is final and permanently activated.