Is google fiber (which, afaik, was not contracted by the government) private infrastructure in your model then?
(Both yes and no are certainly valid answers, I'm just curious about how you view this)
(Both yes and no are certainly valid answers, I'm just curious about how you view this)
For a more general point of view, i'd take into account a lot of factors such as:
- who "owns" the service, both from an "on paper" POV and who builds and maintains it
- what does the contracts between the entity and the government say
- did the government pay for a service to be built by the entity, vs the entity asked for permission to build the service, vs the entity built the service using non-government-permission-required resources
- what was the spirit of the relationship between the entity and the government
- who will be using the service
- is the service a government-allowed monopoly
- etc.
Facebook does pass some of those tests (eg. the "public at large" is the target userbase for it), but fail a lot of the other tests at least in how they operate in the United States. Comcast's general laying out of wire + offering services over that wire passes a lot more of those tests and puts the service into public infrastructure in most folks' eyes.
edit: formatting