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.
Nashua is a city in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, USA. As of the 2000 census, Nashua had a total population of 86,605, making it the second largest city in the state (and in the three northern New England states) after Manchester (pop. 107,219). The estimated population of Nashua in 2007 was 87,150. Built around the now-departed textile industry, in recent decades it has been swept up in southern New Hampshire's economic expansion as part of the Boston region. Nashua was twice named "Best Place to Live in America" in annual surveys by Money magazine. It is the only city to get the No. 1 ranking two times—in 1987 and 1997. In 2007, the Morgan Quitno Press ranked Nashua as the 27th safest city in the country.