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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (3617)	5/10/1999 4:09:00 PM
From: WTC	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

The Ft. Meyers experience sounds like an technology experiment with garbage economic analysis that the utility pulled out of the fire thanks to internet service and billing opportunities. Why? In my part of the northeast, it is worth $.25 to $.32 to avoid an individual meter read by a man walking the neighborhood. That employee of contractor, of course, also has his eyes out for any irregularity in the drop, meter base, etc., that might be a "billing" issue. But let's say, for discussion's sake, that the value of such surveillance is nil. That was about 4 years ago, I realize as I write this. So let's double the avoidance value it for discussion's sake. It looks like the company built and began maintaining a telephone network (apart from existing structure) that it "pays for" with $6 to $8 dollars a YEAR in expense avoidance. Of course, my power company, like many, reads only quarterly, and uses degree-days to estimate interim monthly bills. Maybe they are doing sophisticated centralized power CONTROL to load shed and offer lower rates to customers who let the power company turn their electric hot water heater off mid-day in the summer. There are some pretty cheap ways to do that, too, if that is the real objective. By cheap, I mean much less than the cost of stringing a single-purpose telephone network throughout the power distribution service territory. Sounds to me (the original decision to build a meter reading network) like a regulated monopoly oblivious to the market because it can afford to be; the costs, wise expenditures or foolish ones, will all go into the rate-base anyway. I don't think this necessarily has much to do with informed decisions by well-managed power companies operating under enlightened regulation and currently trying to break into emerging competitive power utility world.