>They do very much want to serve residences too, but state law forbids them from retailing directly to consumers
Why does the law forbid selling directly to consumers?
Why does the law forbid selling directly to consumers?
http://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblock...
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.
http://lukemuehlhauser.com/wp-content/uploads/Bell-Looking-B...
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.
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.