an automatic meter reading system 100 of the present invention as depicted in fig1 the components generally include a plurality of telemetry devices including but not limited to electric meters 102 gas meters 104 and water meters 106 each of the meters may be either electrically or battery powered the system further includes a plurality of endpoints 108 wherein each corresponds and interfaces to a meter each of the endpoints 108 preferably incorporates a radio receiver transmitter e g the itron inc ert the system additionally includes one or more readers 109 that may be fixed or mobile fig1 depicts 1 a mobile hand held reader 110 such as that used in the itron off site meter reading system 2 a mobile vehicle equipped reader 112 such as that used in the itron mobile amr system 3 a fixed radio communication network 114 such as the itron fixed network amr system that utilizes the additional components of cell central control units ccus and network control nodes ncns and 4 a fixed micro network system such as the itron micronetwork amr system that utilizes both radio communication through concentrators and telephone communications through pstn of course other types of readers may be used without departing from the spirit or scope of the invention further included in amr system 100 is a head end host processor 118 the host processor incorporates software that manages the collection of metering data and facilitates the transfer of that data to a utility or supplier billing system 120 the meter reading system of the present invention is.