Now do education, prisons & healthcare !

I think the UK could be taken as an example here.

For the past couple of decades internet access at home has usually been provided over copper phone lines. That infrastructure was originally laid across the country by BT, which was government owned, until a decade ago. The actual digging and trenching work was often done by private contractors, but the resulting infrastructure was owned by the government.

When ADSL broadband rolled out in the 2000s, BT offered their own service, but they were also forced to allow other companies to provide internet access over their infrastructure. At the end of the day the speeds were the same regardless of who you chose, but they competed against each other to gain customers. Unlimited broadband quickly because a thing, and the prices stayed low (compared to the US). Over time they did upgrade the service, and now you can get close to 100mbps over the same, often 40+ year old, cables.

In large cities fibre is rolling out, but it's being done by private companies. The UK has a lot of small towns and villages where that won't make sense, so it will be interesting to see how the market looks in the next 20 years.

Yeah I don't think the UK is the best example. Not as bad as America, sure. But we've been very very slow to roll out fibre or even broadband, especially outside big cities and towns, as you noted. That's exactly why it makes more sense for a single government entity to do this.

In fact BT were going to roll out fibre in 1990 (yes really, I didn't believe this when I first heard but it's true) but Thatcher killed it because it would have given them a monopoly... Yeah. That's exactly as dumb as it sounds. Thanks Tories.

As long as we make sure that the public pensions that will collapse after the expropriation of the utility companies are not bailed out, I am in full support of this. At the end of the day, the largest investors in most utilities are unfunded pension programs (Usually government) desperately looking for a higher rate of return after legislatures overpromised.

Perhaps. But what of those people who live outside of municipalities? Are they to transfer data with RFC 2549?

Yeah yeah, I remember growing up at the tail end of municipal essential services (USSR). For example, plumbers! You call up the municipal services on a Saturday with a water leak, and they tell you "the plumbers are out till Monday, and actually Monday is fully booked so see you Tuesday". I am not sure if private plumbers were fully illegal or a gray area, but we didn't "know a guy", so my mom used to be pretty good with plumbing fixes.

As long as competition exists or can be enforced, municipal services should not exist.

In this case how ever the US ISPs do not have any competition.

You mention the solution to this already, there’s nothing wrong with a municipal service so long as you allow private industry to service it.

In 2024 post-capitalist America the prospect of someone addressing your problem in three days sounds downright instantaneous.

Hello DMV.