Smart grid has been widely considered to be the next generation of power grid, which incorporates smart meters and two-way communications to improve the agility, reliability, efficiency, security, economy and environmental friendliness. One of the key foundations of smart grid is real-time access to meter data via a reliable communication infrastructure. In this paper, we introduce promising wireless communication technologies to fundamentally improve the meter data transmission within smart grid. Furthermore, we propose a cooperative transmission game which aims to improve the reliability of smart grid communication. Numerical results evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.