1.   And that percentage will keep growing, as utilities continue to sell power plants to unregulated companies and independent power producers build more and more new plants.

2.   Atlanta Gas Light President Paula Rosput said the utility made the changes to protect itself against risks as an unregulated company.

3.   But if services were sold separately, consumers might be forced to deal with incompetent workers from unregulated companies.

4.   Dividing the company into regulated local phone companies and an unregulated company to do everything else is more like deregulation than the breakup of a monopoly.

5.   Nearly every new power plant in the United States is being built not by an old-fashioned state-regulated utility, but by largely unregulated companies like NRG.

6.   The unregulated companies prefer plants that can be constructed quickly, with less financial risk.

7.   They argue that a pack of unregulated companies may be ill-equipped to handle natural gas, which is highly explosive.