ordinary skill in the art will appreciate in alternative embodiments the meter reading may be initiated remotely through the network 164 and the meter reading may be sent to a proxy before being sent to a billing service in such embodiments reconciliation modules within the proxy may be configured to perform reconciliations based upon the receipt of data from the network 164 moreover the meter reading may be stored in a memory other than the memory 152 such as a memory at a proxy location furthermore additional steps may be included in a bill reading process by way of example when displaying the present meter readings the method may further display a previously obtained meter reading this is useful when the meters are simple counters in such cases the meter reading may merely be a number therefore to understand what the usage has been since the last meter reading was done the previous meter reading must be subtracted from the current meter reading in a further embodiment the cpu 150 obtains the previous meter reading and identifies to the customer any meter readings that have increased by more than a predetermined amount so that the customer may verify that the reading is correct or take corrective actions such as calling a service technician prior to sending the meter reading to the billing service once the meter reading is transmitted to a billing service a hardcopy bill is prepared using the data from.