Before I answer what is the status quo, I'll just ask: why wouldn't internet access be free to access if it's taxpayer funded? Remember, we were constructing hypotheticals here, and there's no reason the government needs to make a profit on something like this, any more than it makes a profit on roads and bridges [0].

Now, on to the status quo. In what follows, I'm going to consider broadband only. Dialup exists, but isn't particularly interesting because, well... it sucks.

Among the problems the US has with broadband is that only 25 million out of around 330 million of us actually access the internet at broadband (25Mbps+) speeds [1]. The reasons for this are up for debate, but the most logical explanations would seem to be lack of access, lack of affordability, or a combination of both.

Another problem we have is a lack of competition among broadband providers. According to [2], 83 million Americans only have a single broadband internet provider available to them. If that's, say, Comcast, a company not well known for its stellar customer service, to put it mildly [3], then your choice amounts to either deal with the devil and take whatever they offer you, or just don't have broadband.

So, how did we get here? I'm not one to just reflexively say "blame the gubmint," but, in this case, it's true. There was competition in the cable industry in the mid 1990's, until the Telecommunications Act of 1996, an astoundingly complex piece of legislation, scrambled the regulatory environment that was present, ultimately allowing all the regional cable providers that existed before then to consolidate and form the giants we have today: AT&T, Comcast, Charter, and the rest.

Well, great! There are lots of cable companies, so that means there's lots of competition, right? Wrong. These companies co-evolved together and created a situation where each one has lots of local monopolies [4], leading to the situation today, where, paradoxically, there are quite a few cable companies, but consumers frequently only have one to choose from.

And, so, we reach the end of our journey, in which the country that literally invented the internet has extremely slow and expensive broadband internet [5].

In a broader sense, one may ask "how did we get into such a situation?" And, if I may speculate a bit, I believe it's because we have not regarded broadband internet access as a utility.

Before I get into that, I want to quickly mention that since starting a broadband ISP involves huge capital costs in the form of last mile infrastructure [6] (e.g. if Comcast and AT&T want to compete in a certain area, both need to lay down their own cable infrastructure to do so, because neither one wants to share), and significant economies of scale. This leads to them being what's called "natural monopolies." And, surprise, surprise, this is exactly what I mentioned happened!

Now, monopolies can tend to be bad for consumers, but, in the case of natural monopolies, competition is either impractically expensive or fairly impossible. For instance, you don't want more than 1 municipal water company, because then you need to have twice as much water pipe and twice as much purification and pumping infrastructure, and that's just plain wasteful. For something like cable/telecom, it's more that duplicating that last mile is just silly, and would generally be ridiculously expensive, so, the companies just don't do it.

So, you're left with this monopoly sitting here and your consumer over there in need of some kind of protection from it, lest otherwise the water company raise the price of water to $1000/l or something, because it's decided that would be the most profitable thing to do.

There are really only a couple things you can do here:

* Regulate the monopoly by, for instance, limiting price increases and mandating a certain quality of service, minimum coverage areas, that they sell access to their networks for a reasonable cost, or whatever.

* Or, take it over and make it a municipal utility, thus eliminating the profit motive to raise prices to ridiculous levels.

But, we've done none of these things. So, I'm stuck with Comcast, and life sucks. THE END.

Now, tell me, do you think we might be able to improve upon this system just a little bit, or no? ;-)

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[0]: Yes, toll roads and bridges exist, but those are generally either run by private companies, or the tolls go toward paying off bond issues taken out to fund them, not to make a profit.

[1]: https://www.allconnect.com/blog/americas-broadband-divide-re...

[2]: https://ilsr.org/report-most-americans-have-no-real-choice-i...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Comcast#Low_custo...

[4]: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/899472976

[5]: https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/internet-costs-compared...

[6]: I'm kinda ignoring satellite and cellular for now, so bear with me.

[7]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/natural_monopoly.asp