[Pakistan] SSGC introduces computerised meter reading

["Irfan Khan" <khania2@super.net.pk>]

The News, 12 November 2002

SSGC introduces computerised meter reading

KARACHI: The Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) has introduced state of 
the art meter reading system with the help of hand held solid state 
386 single chip micro processor computer.

This hand held computer has the capacity to store data of about 3000 
customers, SSGC told APP. A hand set computer is connected to a 
computer and onward to mainframe and records the gas meter reading 
directly. This has eliminated all manual reading and recording 
procedures of gas consumption and requires no paper work.

It has reduced the chances of error to zero level as no one can play 
tricks with meter reading, a SSGC official said. Recounting the 
advantages of hand held computer, he said that it saved time, 
improved quality of meter reading, reduced operational cost, 
eliminated manual data entry, verification, checking and correction 
process and reduced reconciliation time.

The hand held computer is shock proof and weighs only 340 grams with 
18 hours battery back up. It can operate in a temperature between 10 
to 55 degrees celsius. It operates with C language application 
software and works on DOS system.

The SSGC has offered the gas consumers to supply them gas bills on a 
date of their choice. The SSGC carries out meter reading of 1,592,036 
domestic customers in 18 days at over 89,000 per day, all 2285 
industrial customers in one day and all 17,652 commercial customers 
in two days. The company has started meter reading entirely through 
hand held computer from the current month.

source: http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/nov2002-daily/12-11-
2002/metro/k8.htm