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.
*Mission is a city in Todd County, South Dakota, United States, and the Rosebud Indian Reservation. The population was 904 at the 2000 census. Mission is home of the Sinte Gleska University. It is the largest incorporated community in the county, but is smaller than the unincorporated community of Rosebud, which is the capital of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. It is named for one of the many missions established by religious groups in the late 1800s to assist the Sicangu Lakota (Rosebud Sioux) and other AmerInd nations. It is the major market center of the county, and is located at the junction of US-83 and US-18 (the Oyate Trail, the home of Todd County School District, Cherry-Todd Rural Electric Cooperative, and various federal/tribal agencies). On episodes of The Price is Right, Bob Barker denoted that Mission was the town in which he spent his childhood while his mother worked as a teacher on the Indian reservation. Mission is also the home of Neal Wanless, who won a South Dakota–record $232.1 million (annuity value; he chose the cash option) in the Powerball drawing of May 27, 2009.