## 1 Introduction  
The Smart Grid is recognized today as a revolutionary concept that, even with some of the problems associated to the lack of consensus over a unique and closed definition [1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6; 7; 8], is in the process of being implemented in many electricity grids all over the world. Within the aspects that may be highlighted as standing within the consensus of the utility community in the Smart Grid definition, we find the addition of recent advances of electronics, and information and communications technologies (ICTs) applied on the distribution grid electricity assets, to get a better energy supply based on remote monitoring and metering of the existing assets, a better adjustment between energy production and consumption, the optimization of operation reaction times, and the improvement in the grid technical losses. Smart Metering is the application that is experiencing greater support both from the industry and utilities, that find in the deployment of smart meters an opportunity to build the foundations for a larger scope Smart Grid, while obtaining some immediate advantages derived from the savings and commercial opportunities based on the real time access to customers' smart meters. PLC is a telecommunications technology with a long history and tradition in electricity companies, with a wide scope of applications, varieties and implementations. The confluence of the Smart Metering and PLC technologies has been highlighted from the very first conception of PLC systems, and increasingly in the last decades. The projection of PLC into the Smart Grid is a matter that has been specifically addressed by [9], recognizing in PLC \"_an excellent and mature technology that can support a wide variety of applications from the transmission side to the distribution side and also to and within the home_\". From a purely academic perspective, the evolution of the subjects focusing the attention of researchers on PLC has followed the historical path of industry interest (high voltage (HV)-lines propagation, metering and control, medium voltage (MV)-environment, broadband (BB) access, and in-home communications). Of late, Smart Grids have focused much of the attention of both industry and academic world, through an evolution in which Smart Metering has been the core of the interest. The PLC literature is mainly composed of academic papers focused on low level specific details of PLC technology. Noise, channel characteristics, modulation schemes, MAC architectures, _etc_. (see reference [10]), are extensively covered by academic researchers. With all this information, PLC technology has managed to progress and evolve into different system specifications that have subsequently been applied on real field to provide real services. However, the application of any PLC technology to the electricity grid is not straightforward. The so-called \"PLC learning curve\" might not be easy for an electricity company that needs to make use of PLC to deploy a service-oriented PLC system. Electricity grid specific details are not often found in the conventional scientific literature and even in the electricity industry related associations (e.g., [11]). Thus the deployment of PLC solutions is often a field in which utilities cannot be easily assisted, as not many general public technical references can be found. It is the opinion of the authors that this circumstance is the main reason of the slow and unequal adoption rate of PLC technologies in the different utilities. The causes for these non-existing standard deployment guidelines include reasons such as application of the technology on real grids being far from academics, electricity grid being a transmission media that needs skilled technicians to be handled and that is not accessible to the general public (with the exception of the in-home segment), and PLC technology not being a conventional transmission media for telecommunication specialists. This paper will contribute to solve these aspects, providing guidelines for the deployment of Smart Metering systems.