Public utilities provide electric, gas, water or telephone service to customers in a specified area. Utilities have a duty to provide safe and adequate service on reasonable terms to anyone who lives within the service area on without discriminating between customers. Because most utilities operate in near monopolistic conditions, they can be heavily regulated by local, state, and federal authorities. Generally, the local and state agencies are called Public Service Commissions (PSC) or Public Utility Commissions (PUC). Municipal Utilities and Rural Electric Cooperatives may be unregulated though.
Nunam Iqua, formerly called Sheldon Point, is a city in the Wade Hampton Census Area in the U.S. state of Alaska. At the 2000 census the population was 164. Nunam Iqua is a Yupik name meaning "the end of the tundra". A man named Sheldon opened a fish saltery there in the 1930s, and the city was incorporated under the name Sheldon Point in 1974. The name was changed to Nunam Iqua in a November 1999 referendum.