Smartmeters are expensive. There are labor savings, but the cost of deployment will not be recovered for many years. The rate of return on these things (if implemented with reasonable efficiency) is in line with utilities cost of capital.
Other increasing costs are due to increased regulation. SOX, for instance, has cost utilities tremendous sums. California regulations and new Federal regulations (NERC, etc.) are also extremely expensive.
If a machine that digitally computes an integral and sends the result on a radio to a transmitter tied into the Internet needs more than $50 to build in China, then the electric company has some stupid engineers.