“The Swiss company says it will use the funds for a fast and dramatic deployment of smart meters, and not just in the U.S. — it will look at rolling out its hardware in Asia, Australia and Europe as well. Smart metering in the European Union is actually far ahead of U.S. initiatives, due in part to an aggressive mandate that 80 percent of homes must be equipped with smart meters by 2020 and 100 percent by 2022.”