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.
Kingsport is a city in Hawkins and Sullivan counties in the U.S. state of Tennessee. The majority of the city lies in Sullivan County. The population was 44,095 at the 2000 census. The name is a simplification of "King's Port," originally referring to the area around Ross's Landing. Kingsport is a principal city of the Kingsport–Bristol–Bristol, TN-VA Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), which had a population of 302,451 as of 2006. The Metropolitan Statistical Area is a component of the Johnson City–Kingsport–Bristol, TN-VA Combined Statistical Area – commonly known as the "Tri-Cities" region. It is also commonly included in what is known as the "Mountain Empire," which includes a portion of southwest Virginia and the mountainous counties in Tennessee to the east.