Your Apple devices could one day help track and pay your utility bills

Your Apple devices could one day help you track and pay your utility bills. The company has filed for a patent for “Establishing a Data Subscription for Utility Usage Information.”

About the patent filing

The patent involves utilizing an electronic device to initiate a subscription for utility usage information. In the patent filing Apple says that as the world becomes more energy-aware and the cost of energy has increased, it has become desirable to some people to obtain and track utility usage information at, for example, their place of residence. 

The tech giant adds that, on the utility provider side, generally utility providers welcome customer engagement in exploring usage tracking and usage cutting techniques to reduce pressure on utility transmission channels. I’m a little dubious about that, but, oh well.

The patent filing involve systems and methods for Apple’s various devices to be enabled to track your utility data usage and you pay your utility bills.

Summary of the patent

Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent filing: “Aspects of the subject technology provide for establishing at a user device, as subscription for utility usage data from a utility provider at a server of the utility provider. 

“The subscription may be handled by an intermediary server and data provided to the user device from the intermediary server. Various authentication and validation steps can be made to ensure that the user attempting to subscribe to the utility usage data corresponds to the customer of the utility provider.”