How much of that comes down to municipalities not allowing competition on the poles though?
This is no more "opening up to the free market" than if someone owns some land and a regulator says "you have to allow other people's cattle to graze here and must charge what we consider a fair price".
--> This isn't to say free markets are the best or that we should unregulated natural monopolies in the name of private property. Rather, regulatory pseudo-markets often wind-up just as shams to allow effective monopolies without implied responsibility to the public that a regulated monopoly has.