There can't be any meaningful competition between a private company and a government entity that can tax people to pay off its infrastructure bonds and take land by eminent domain.
I see this statement bandied about quite frequently. Would you like to substantiate the claim and/or provide examples of actual public harm where such faux competition exists?
It's actually self-evident in the claim. Tell any venture capitalist they'll be doing the same thing as the competition in a regulated market except the competition can get exempted from regulations or pull in tons of extra money in form of tax revenue. Who wants to take that risk in the U.S. system? I think you could say it's played out in the areas where utilities introduced cheap broadband. Articles on those usually major players are suffering over there compared to where they're competing with private companies like their own.
I do have a specific example, though. My background is high assurance security & systems. The government once used incentives + good criteria to get market to create quite a few products their pentesters couldn't break. Then, NSA started competing with private sector under a new initiative. Market went away with Boeing guy clear that was largely why. Only a few remain and stay stagnant because companies won't invest much further in them due to risk posed by both market demand and government decisions.
I see that you have proven the nonviability of FedEx, UPS and all other package carriers that compete with government postal services.
I also note that you have proven the nonexistence of private security companies, since they compete with the police and are much more restricted, by law, in what they can do.
And there can't be any private shuttle bus services, because there are municipal bus services.
I think you need to modify your claim.
All of these companies do reasonably well by competing with government-run services by offering things that the government isn't providing and is unlikely to provide because it unreasonably benefits a single user: on-demand pickups and guaranteed delivery times; full-time guards in a particular location; a bus that runs directly to your campus.
My above claim indicated that there was a lot of risk in competing directly with government and for about the same thing they're offering. It doesn't preclude that success is possible. Besides, most of the examples you give are poor because, as you said, the private firms weren't trying to offer the same thing.
For instance, much USPS expense comes from the fact that they have to ship cheap anywhere. The overlap between them and private sector is the closest you come to a valid example. Private security in most states doesn't have to do much past issue warnings and call the police, while police can take direction action. A bus that runs directly to your campus isn't a general purpose bus or serving most people. So, yeah, it's certainly easier to offer a service that does less than the government one for fewer people and be successful.
Back to the actual topic at hand: fiber infrastructure. Laying out fiber all over the place has a high cost with low amount of money coming in. That's for lowest tiers. The Tier 1's expend 8-9 digits maintaining backbones. So, if government started competing, you can bet the private market would suffer & re-consider new fiber investments. The only model making sense at that point would be offering value-added services on top of connectivity while doing private investments where government wouldn't go.
