Public utility

A public utility is a company that maintains the infrastructure for a public service. Public utilities often involve natural monopolies, and as a result are often government monopolies, or (if privately owned) treated as specially regulated sectors.

In poorer developing countries, public utilities are often limited to wealthier parts of major cities, as used to be the case in developed countries in the nineteenth century.

Examples of utilities are:

· Electric power transmission and electricity distribution

· Drinking water purification and distribution

· Sewage treatment and disposal

· Other waste disposal

· Natural gas distribution

· District heat generation and distribution

· Public transport by bus, train, etc.

· Cable television and telephone lines.

2. Find English equivalents to the following word combinations:

a) set of interconnected structural elements

b) the term is used

c) physical infrastructure

d) the movement of people

e) public service

f) public utilities

g) electric power transmission

h) purification and distribution

i) gas distribution

3. Answer the questions:

1. What is infrastructure?

2. What is transport?

3. What transport networks do you know?

4. What kinds of vehicles are there?

5. What categories of transport do you know?

6. What does public utility consist of?

4.Complete the sentences:

1. Infrastructure, most generally, is the set of interconnected …

2. The term is used differently in a variety of fields …

3. Transport or transportation is the movement of people…

4. Infrastructure includes....

5. A public utility is a company...