the use of Wi-Fi and other internet related networks. To date no one solution seems to be optimal for all applications. Rural utilities have very different communication problems from urban utilities or utilities located in difficult locations such as mountainous regions or areas ill-served by wireless and internet companies. In addition to communication with the head-end network, smart meters may need to be part of a home area network, which can include an in-premises display and a hub to interface one or more meters with the head end. Technologies for this network vary from country to country, but include power line communication, wireless ad hoc network, and Zigbee. Protocols ANSI C12.18 is an ANSI Standard that describes a protocol used for two-way communications with a meter, mostly used in North American markets. The C12.18 Standard is written specifically for meter communications via an ANSI Type 2 Optical Port, and specifies lower-level protocol details. ANSI C12.19 specifies the data tables that are used. ANSI C12.21 is an extension of C12.18 written for modem instead of optical communications, so it is better suited to automatic meter reading. ANSI C12.22 is the communication protocol for remote communications. IEC 61107 is a communication protocol for smart meters published by the IEC that is widely used for utility meters in the European Union. It is superseded by IEC 62056, but remains in wide use because it is simple and well-accepted. It sends ASCII data using a serial port. The physical media are either modulated light, sent with an LED and received with a photodiode, or a pair of wires, usually modulated by EIA-485. The protocol is half-duplex. IEC 61107 is related to, and sometimes wrongly confused with, the FLAG protocol. Ferranti and Landis+Gyr were early proponents of an interface standard that eventually became a sub-set of IEC1107. The Open Smart Grid Protocol (OSGP) is a family of specifications published by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) used in conjunction with the ISO/IEC 14908 control networking standard for smart metering and smart grid applications. Millions of smart meters based on OSGP are deployed worldwide. On July 15, 2015, the OSGP Alliance announced the release of a new security protocol (OSGP-AES-128-PSK) and its availability from OSGP vendors. This deprecated the original OSGP-RC4-PSK security protocol which had been identified to be vulnerable. There is a growing trend toward the use of TCP/IP technology as a common communication platform