A smartphone is now part of so many households. Surely it would make sense to build and evaluate a meter-reader app.

The other day, amazingly, I was in when the meter man called. However, he could not get to the meter across a newly laid floor. I promised him a photo, which I obtained using my smartphone after the floor had set. I sent it to him by email. Simple. He was delighted. Time, date, location (phone is GPS enabled), meter reference number, meter type and the reading. All in one familiar human readable format. With OCR it could be machine readable too.

A simple app for a smart phone which guides the householder through taking an acceptable photo and then transmits the photo to the meter reading company when in signal could deliver a high proportion of the benefits offered by a smart meter and avoid the installation costs. It would avoid hazards too it would seem.

Uh-oh. I see that someone probably thinks the answer is "yes". http://utility-meter-reader.com/
and so does E-ON according to this article.