Smart Grid Communications: It's about More than Wires ...

... it's about wireless, including how today there's not nearly enough wireless coverage to go around:

Coverage is indeed one of the challenges as some utilities have up to 50% of their service area not covered by their existing networks. Utilities often operate in a mix of dense urban to extreme rural areas and need to flexibility of operating in both.

2-way comms and robust security will likely require far more bandwidth than this offering can provide, but it's a start towards a solution we didn't even know we needed a few years ago. See more: here.