UTILITIES

If you have an apartment (or certainly with a house), you will probably need to setup utilities. Among those utilities would be:
— Natural Gas
— Electricity
— Water
— Internet

The first 3 are typically handled by a single utility. In Wisconsin you might be using Madison Gas & Electric or Alliant Energy, but regardless the process is essentially the same.

  • Call Customer Service
  • Provide the Service address (your Apartment)
  • The people who will be billed
  • Your Social Security Number (SSN)
  • The location of any gas and electric meters.
  • You can expect to hear back about your application within 3–5 business days. 

On an apartment, water bills often are taken care of by the land lord. On a house you will need to contact you local utility just like you did for the Gas, and Electric. They will ask the same questions are take about the same amount of time to get done.

On these utilities, the amount of usage can cause a different bill amount each month. Ask the utility company to put you on a “Budget” plan so that each month the billing amount will be the same. At the end of a year, they will adjust the amount up or down as needed and they will let you know.

This way you could use your bank’s automatic bill pay to schedule a payment each month.


Internet service will vary depending on the Internet Service Provider (also called ISP). Your options might include
— Cable like Charter Spectrum (starting at $30)
— Fiber like TDS (starting at $40)
— Satellite like HughesNet (starting at $50)

All of these offering depend on your location as not all offerings are available everywhere. Make sure there no no limits on your usage (like they have on cellular).

They will ask you questions like:

— What speed do you need.
Unless you are running more than 2 streaming videos at a time, it is likely the slowest speed should be fine.
— Do you need a router
Although you would save a monthly fee for their router, it avoids a lot of problems if you just use their router.


Regardless of who you select, they will send technician out and they will install the equipment and show you how to hook up your computer to it. DON’T let them leave until it is working perfectly on YOUR PC.