NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Utility company

A public utility is a company that maintains the infrastructure for a public service. Public utilities often involve natural monopolies, and as a result are often government monopolies, or (if privately owned) treated as specially regulated sectors. Public utilities can be privately owned or publicly owned. Publicly owned utilities include cooperative and municipal utilities. Municipal utilities may actually include territories outside of city limits or may not even serve the entire city. Cooperative utilities are owned by the customers they serve. They are usually found in rural areas. Private utilities, also called investor owned utilities, are owned by investors. Unlike private companies, private utilities may be listed on the stock exchange. Private, in this context, means not owned by the public or the government. Public services is a term usually used to mean services provided by government to its citizens, either directly (through the public sector) or by financing private provision of services. ... In economics, a natural monopoly occurs when, due to the economies of scale of a particular industry, the maximum efficiency of production and distribution is realized through a single supplier. ... Use of the term The concept of property or ownership has no single or universally accepted definition. ... A publicly traded corporation often refers to a company whose shares are traded on the open market, such as a stock market. ... A municipality or general-purpose district (compare with: special-purpose district) is an administrative local area generally composed of a clearly defined territory and commonly referring to a city, town, or village government. ... Rural area in Dalarna, Sweden Sheep eating grass in rural Australia Rural areas are sparsely settled places away from the influence of large cities and towns. ... Investment or investing is a term with several closely-related meanings in finance and economics. ... Public is of or pertaining to the people; belonging to the people; relating to, or affecting, a nation, state, or community; opposed to private; as, the public treasury, a road or lake. ...

In poorer developing countries, public utilities are often limited to wealthier parts of major cities, as used to be the case in developed countries in the nineteenth century. A developing country is a country with low average income compared to the world average. ... A developed country is a country that has achieved (currently or historically) a high degree of industrialization, and which enjoys the higher standards of living which wealth and technology make possible. ...

Developments in technology have eroded some of the monopoly aspects of traditional public utilities. For instance, electricity generation, electricity retailing, telecommunication and postal services have become competitive in some countries and the trend towards liberalization, deregulation and privatization of public utilities is growing. Transmission lines in Lund, Sweden Electric power transmission is one process in the delivery of electricity to consumers. ... Electricity distribution is the penultimate process in the delivery of electricity, the part between transmission and user purchase from an electricity retailer. ... Drinking water Drinking water is water that is intended to be drunk by humans. ... Sewage treatment is the process that removes the majority of the contaminants from waste-water or sewage and produces both a liquid effluent suitable for disposal to the natural environment and a sludge. ... WASTE is a peer-to-peer and friend-to-friend protocol and piece of software developed by Justin Frankel at Nullsoft in 2003. ... Natural gas (commonly referred to as gas in many countries, but note that gas is also an American and Canadian shortening of gasoline) is a gaseous fossil fuel consisting primarily of methane. ... Skytrain Bangkok. ... TheBus, established by Mayor Frank Fasi, is Honolulus only public transit system. ... In rail transport, a train consists of a single or several connected rail vehicles that are capable of being moved together along a guideway to transport freight or passengers from one place to another along a planned route. ... Coaxial cable is often used to transmit cable television into the house Cable television or Community Antenna Television (CATV) (often shortened to cable) is a system of providing television, FM radio programming and other services to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted directly to peopleâ€™s televisions through fixed optical... The telephone or phone (Greek: tele = far away and phone = voice) is a telecommunications device which is used to transmit and receive sound (most commonly voice and speech) across distance. ... Itaipu Dam is a hydroelectric generating station Electricity generation is the first process in the delivery of electricity to consumers. ... Electricity retailing is the final process in the delivery of electricity from generation to the consumer. ... BlackBerry 7100t Telecommunication refers to communication over long distances. ... Postbox redirects here. ... In general, liberalization refers to a relaxation of previous government restrictions, usually in areas of social or economic policy. ... Deregulation is the process by which governments remove restrictions on business in order to (in theory) encourage the efficient operation of markets. ... Privatization (sometimes privatisation, denationalization, or, especially in India, disinvestment) is the process of transferring property, from public ownership to private ownership and/or transferring the management of a service or activity from the government to the private sector. ...

See also: A Public Utility District (PUD) is an entity that provides, electricity, natural gas, sewer, waste collection, wholesale telecommunications, water, etc. ...

Category: Political economy These are lists of public utilities. ... Public services is a term usually used to mean services provided by government to its citizens, either directly (through the public sector) or by financing private provision of services. ... In general, liberalization refers to a relaxation of previous government restrictions, usually in areas of social or economic policy. ... Electricity markets have been and continue to be developed as a result of the deregulation of electricity utilities around the world. ... BlackBerry 7100t Telecommunication refers to communication over long distances. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...