I'm kinda bummed to hear that. I have mentioned how it's done in the Netherlands on several occasions. I thought it had worked - sad it didn't.

Why does one provider get a privileged relationship with the maintainer? I'm surprised that in all those industries there was never a complete division of control.

I used to live in a town with a similar system, which worked great. I suppose the difference was that the maintainer (the municipality power company) was never an ISP themselves.

That's what anti monopoly laws are for. You can either provide infrastructure, or sell to customers not both.

It worked amazingly in Japan

Practically overnight (metaphorically) it went from only metered dial up or expensive isdn to ultra fast dsl. There was huge competition mostly lead by SoftBank Japan. The actually handed out routers at subway station exits. Every time their competitors including the old monopoly matched their speed they'd double it. It was awesome to watch