TBH there is a serious vacuum in the bitcoin marketplace for as you say basic necessity. I'm sure that when the market cap breaks 5 billion US you will see someone, most likely a financial institution looking to get in early, start offering automatic bill pay using bitcoins. They will offer some exchange rate based on the most reliable exchange, probably coinsetter by that time. There's a real opportunity here for a few visionary people to start developing a new municipality somewhere where all the merchants and utilities will take bitcoins. Imagine a bitcoin city built with all the latest green concepts. Could have one in every country.