What he's talking about is a situation where the consumer can choose who to buy their electricity from. In most of the US electricity is a lot like cable TV: t

What he's talking about is a situation where the consumer can choose who to buy their electricity from. In most of the US electricity is a lot like cable TV: the company that owns the cable is the company that you buy your cable TV from. In around 15 states there are districts where it works like the wired phone system worked after local loop unbundling: you paid the company that owned the wire for access to the wire, and independently paid a phone company for telephone service over the wire and/or an ISP for DSL service over the wire.