The paper presents the development of utilities and businesses in the city of Zagreb. From the founding of individual companies to the founding of the Zagreb Holding, which united them under one "roof'. In Croatia as in the world, not everyone agrees on which activities should fall into utilities and which ones should be market or energy and the like. Even the Zagreb Holding Company itself, the company providing these utilities, among others, does not agree on what services should be utilities, and over the years, public city companies have moved from one activity to another. Therefore, this paper focuses on services that are certainly communal, both in our country and in most of the world's cities. Although the topic of the paper may not seem at first glance to be related to the Information Technology Study, today more or less all activities in one way or another have something to do with information and communication technologies. And so the paper describes the beginning of communal services in the city of Zagreb, their evolution over the years, but also when and what technologies were introduced and why. The problems that have led to certain changes are described and analyzed, and how they have changed the direction and evolution of the companies themselves. The paper also explores trends in the world, most notably in the European Union, and what technologies and measures are already being introduced, as well as future technologies that will, apart from providing better and more efhcient services to citizens, also help solve some of the existential problems plagued by our world.