The U.S. market is smothered by local monopolies[1] and a global duopoly. Your argument would hold water if the free market has been given chance at all.
The largely-unregulated market was given a chance. It created local monopolies and duopolies.
It's long past time to try something else.
Local monopolies were granted by municipalities, certain officials and not the prospective end users. The very first winning bid from a cable company carried the monopoly clause. Once the monopolies had been granted, the market was no longer free; basically the market was (and is) no more.
I'd argue that a free market for cable / broadband access never ever existed.
I agree. This is because that market was never regulated. A free market for POTS/DSL access did exist (and to a large extent still exists). Federally regulated mandatory line sharing made it happen.
It does not benefit the public good to run multiple, competing sets of infrastructure to carry commodities.
However, -as we see in things as disparate as Instant Messaging networks, remote-controlled lightbulbs, and wired Internet access- private business places far more value on capturing and walling in sections of the population than they do helping to facilitate a vibrant, competitive marketplace that promotes customer choice. From a business perspective, this lock-in makes sense. This isn't the best thing for society, though.
It's possible that Cable could eventually have grown to compete technologically, but in a world where Bell was still a single unregulated entity, it strikes me as unlikely that cable could have survived independently.
To build a parallel tax-funded infrastructure like the fine article says, would be just silly in those monopoly markets (instead of enabling commercial competition first; not sure if New York in particular has any meaningful competition, so this may not apply there).