It's reasonable to explore the idea of creating (or privatizing...) public services. I feel the article should have done more of an economic analysis, especially of harder examples, to properly compare with existing options and where they're available. Ideally the analysis would include the historic costs paid as well, as technology marches on and instead being some company's burden it becomes the people's burden.

It would scale better than a private company could, especially in a country the size and density of Canada. Instead of a set number of workers and amount of funding allowing building at a constant rate the government would be able to hire workers in every area, with local tax funds, for a very sudden and broad start. Towns could build out the local network, and link via microwave, before the fiber backbone reached them.