wishing to take service under the new rate must demonstrate that their load is largely flat and, thus, maximizes the nongas costs of serving their needs.

The Florida Public Service Commission (PSC) has approved a proposal by Peoples Gas System, Inc. to make gas transportation service available to customers that use more than 500,000 therms of natural gas, in the aggregate, at multiple delivery points within its service territory. To qualify, the multiple facilities must be directly owned and operated in the name of a single customer of record. The rates will be the same as those charged under the otherwise applicable sales tariff, less the purchased-gas adjustment charge.

The Arkansas Public Service Commission (PSC) has authorized Arkla, a division of Noram Energy Corp. and a natural gas local distribution company (LDC), to apply a weather normalization adjustment to billings from November through April. Finding that the new clause did not constitute a "general rate increase," the PSC rejected procedural objections that it failed to meet certain notice requirements.

As this snapshot look at the seven utility mergers announced since January 1995 demonstrates, traditional patterns are no longer being followed. A number of the announced transactions did not fit squarely into either the merger-of-equals model (little or no premium, fairly even equity and board split, CEO succession plan) or the acquisition model (high premium, disparate equity and board split, no CEO succession plan).

Cutting employees

may be less than healthy, unless you're ready to replace them with technology.

As competition intensifies, increasing numbers of executives are realizing that customer service may have a more important role now than just placating regulators. After all, the broad spectrum of customer service is the principal way (em other than rates (em to differentiate a utility product and the utility itself.

Computer systems must move beyond insular needs (billing and work orders)

to marketing opportunities. But few regulators really understand.

Everywhere we see the march of technology, especially computer and information technology. Pagers hang on nearly every belt or bag, PDAs have replaced notebooks and portfolios, computers sit on more home desks, and every major magazine and almost every daily paper has sections dedicated to news about the Internet.

Economists often seem enamored of economic efficiency, honoring its merits while decrying the lost benefits of inefficient outcomes. But really ... what's the harm in a little inefficiency? Well, the harm may be more real than we recognize.

When the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) instituted the subscriber line charge (SLC), telephone household penetration rates actually increased, even though local rates rose when the SLC was rolled in.

"Anyone who assumes rural electric cooperatives will not be fully engaged in whatever system we have . . . if they assume the more competitive it becomes, the less we'll be engaged . . . they're very wrong."

(em Glenn English, CEO,

National Rural Electric

Cooperative Association

Ten terms as a U.S. Representative from Oklahoma's Sixth District taught Glenn English how to build consensus.

You've heard talk lately about the convergence of electricity and natural gas. That idea has grown as commodity markets have matured for gas and emerged for bulk power.

But some economists take a different view. They see the real convergence occurring between electricity and telecommunications. I'm not talking about the "smart house" or fiber-to-the-whatever. Instead, how is the product is created?