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.
Fairmount is a town in Fairmount Township, Grant County in east central Indiana. The population was 2,866 at the 2006 census. It is ninety kilometers (fifty-five miles) northeast of Indianapolis. Largely a bedroom community to its three thousand citizens, Fairmount is best known as the boyhood home of actor James Dean, who is buried there.