at some point they will decide my meter is "too old"
Actually, speaking as an energy company employee, I can assure you that we cannot choose to install a smart meter if you don't want one. Although if your meter needed replacement through fault or life expiry, in the short term you'd probably get a digital non-smart meter, longer term you'd probably end up with a smart meter operating in dumb mode.
But, for the billionth time, it's not because suppliers want the damned things, it is because Parliament passed a law requiring energy suppliers to try and fit them in all homes by 2020. There's no real business case in my view, but the carbon-obsessives are convinced that they are essential, so you and I as energy customers are on the hook for the whole (likely) £15bn scheme. If you believe in the official approved version of climate change, and the important role of government in saving you, then you will be pleased at the smart meter scheme.
And if you want to understand why suppliers are pushing them so hard, and not letting on too loudly that you have a choice, you only need to look at the £7m fine that E.ON were hit with by the over-zealous communists at Ofgem a few months back for not having evidence to support why they hadn't installed AMR (near enough Smart meters) for certain categories of business customer by a previous deadline. And reading the Ofgem report on that, the root cause was not lack of trying, but E.ON's shonky record keeping wasn't acceptable proof of those efforts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
