Sure, I guess that would be a fine term. Like spokes on a wheel, they leave the hub (the breaker panel) and do not come back. In fact, depending on exactly how your wiring is done, it would violate one of the cardinal rules here: only one source of power for any box or containment device. Put another way, suppose there are 5 wires running into a junction box (a box where we join wires, ALL wires MUST be connected in a box with exactly one exception not worth bothering with here): only one can supply power or be 'hot' under any circumstances. That way when you cut power to that box, you know that box is 'cold'. So yeah, one run out of the panel, but that run can have many junction boxes, outlets, switches, lights, etc., etc. on it. There is a limit, and a way to figure that limit (just been through all this for my own house but I think it is 1.2 amps per outlet, so something like a max. of 18? 15? allowable on a 20 amp circuit) but it rarely kicks in. Our electrical code is in a book you could measure in inches.
My water meter is as you describe; in the house but readable via RF from outside. But electrical meters are all outside although I believe the new ones use RF for remote but short range reading also. We have 'meter readers' who walk around and read the meters (water, gas (not THAT gas, what you I believe call methane, electric).
Yeah, non- Americans are surprised to see all the telephone poles and wires here. As I said, it is moving underground but only in newly built communities around here (where I live specifically). In large cities, it all went underground long ago. Hey, it gives us something to bang into with an errant car; no shortage of cars driving into them either. On rare occasions, with enough speed and a sizeable car, it IS possible to snap a pole off and cut off power and communications to entire communities. But as I said, that takes a LOT of effort, mostly the pole does fine and the car has a very distinctive "U" shaped groove in the front, depth depending on the speed of the vehicle (the poles rarely have any velocity at all so everything is up to the determination of the driver).
I am not aware of anything like local data collection centers or the means of how to get the data there. ?? I do know that my landline phones ALWAYS know what the correct time / date is so they must be in contact with something over the phone line without announcing it.
An English friend of many years ago claimed all the clocks in the UK had some type of embedded setting mechanism / link; bring them home, power them up and after a short while, they would display the correct time. Neat idea. Not happening in the US, again as far as I know. And it would not be shunned either: recently with all the Karate Kid power stuff going on around here (power on / power off / power on / power off) we have had more than enough clock setting. I believe there is only one time zone in the UK so that would really help that system work there; there are four times zones in the continental US, plus some really strange daylight savings time situations (an official date for it to start, then the altered date on which it really starts, usually a few weeks separate).
Brian
Ah so what you do is run a radial circuit(s)
Other than some rural areas the power in the main (no pun intended) comes in via underground cables.
As for the meter , new properties the electricity ( & gas) meters are typically accessible from outside the house so they can be read without need to come in. Fuse boxes are pretty much always indoors, usually high up away from kids although mine is at floor level, again due to being an older property.
That said there is a big push at the moment for Smart meters that phone home via short range radio/wifi to local collector points