We have a similar system for electrical distribution; per area a single organisation has sole responsibility for the physical infrastructure and they bill your energy company of choice. That means that on your invoice you have a fixed amount of infrastructure cost as a component, and your service/usage fee from the energy company. Same for gas.

This is probably common (or at least more common than internet-infra-as-a-utility), but the concept of doing the same for data would benefit a lot of people. We had that for POTS/PSTN and Coaxical data (CATV/cable/whateveryoucallit) as well, which was privatised and now opened up again so you get your infrastructure component as a national fixed fee and you simply pay your provider of choice for the actual service.