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.
Memphis is a city in the southwest corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4 Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers. Memphis has an estimated population of 669,651, making it the largest city in the state of Tennessee, the third largest in the Southeastern United States, and the 19th largest in the United States. The greater Memphis metropolitan area, including adjacent counties in Mississippi and Arkansas, has a population of 1,280,533. This makes Memphis the second largest metropolitan area in Tennessee, surpassed only by metropolitan Nashville, which overtook Memphis in recent years. Memphis is the youngest of Tennessee's four major cities. A resident of Memphis is referred to as a Memphian and the Memphis region is known, particularly to media outlets, as the "Mid-South."