Around here (Portugal) I believe that smart meters send their info over the electrical wire itself (as they had to install repeater/transponder stations at the network transformers and the bandwidth needed for something like this is ridiculously small).

Certainly it would be an upside of being behind most of the rest of Europe in most things - when finally something gets installed in the infrastructure of one of the local politically connected (read: not really competing on superior quality or efficiency) utilities, the technology is already more mature.