the project and instead promote competition in domestic energy metering, as the Germans do – and as the UK already has in industrial metering. Every consumer should have the right to appoint the meter operator of their choice." The high number of SMETS1 meters installed has been criticized by Peter Earl, head of energy at the price comparison website comparethemarket.com. He said, "The Government expected there would only be a small number of the first-generation of smart meters before Smets II came in, but the reality is there are now at least five million and perhaps as many as 10 million Smets I meters." UK smart meters in southern England and the Midlands use the mobile phone network to communicate, so they do not work correctly when phone coverage is weak. A solution has been proposed, but was not operational as of March 2017. In March 2018 the National Audit Office (NAO), which watches over public spending, opened an investigation into the smart meter program, which had cost £11bn by then, paid for by electricity users through higher bills. The National Audit Office published the findings of its investigation in a report titled "Rolling out smart meters" published in November 2018. The report, amongst other findings, indicated that the number of smart meters installed in the UK would fall materially short of the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) original ambitions of all UK consumers having a smart meter installed by 2020. In September 2019, smart meter rollout in the UK was delayed for four years. Ross Anderson and Alex Henney wrote that "Ed Miliband cooked the books" to make a case for smart meters appear economically viable. They say that the first three cost-benefit analyses of residential smart meters found that it would cost more than it would save, but "ministers kept on trying until they got a positive result... To achieve 'profitability' the previous government stretched the assumptions shamelessly". A counter-fraud officer at Ofgem with oversight of the roll-out of the smart meter program who raised concerns with his manager about many millions of pounds being misspent was threatened with imprisonment under section 105 of the Utilities Act 2000, a provision intended to protect national security. The Employment Appeal Tribunal found that the law was in contravention of the European Convention on Human Rights. See also DASH7 Distributed generation DLMS Electranet Home energy monitor Home network