They are taking hours to change out to smart meters? Our utility sent post cards every week for a couple weeks explaining the process and offering scheduled timeslots if desired. When they actually to do it they had a set of jumpers to connect around the meter. They record the reading from the old meter (on one of those worthless computer things us Zeros program) and take a picture of the face, change the meter, scan the barcode on the new meter to activate it and pull the jumpers. The whole process takes maybe 5 minutes.
I'm not sure if they communicate over the power lines or by a cell modem. Maybe in your area they also had to install powerline communication gear?