That's ridiculous. Who's going to do the work? Not government workers. Who's going to provide the services? Not the government. The funds would be raised the same way as any other corporate project. The only difference is separation of the infrastructure providers from the service providers. Service providers will pay the infrastructure providers for access to the connections to their customers. That's how it will be paid for. Startup fees could be in the form of bonds that could be paid back over time. Hell, some companies would probably buy in just for an equal chance to compete with Comcast or Verizon in a given area.

Look, we own the roads. Not Ford, not Chevrolet, not Toyota. In some places the roads are not in great shape because the money isn't being spent where it should to keep it up. That is a government problem but it's mostly a lazy voter problem. There are people that argue less government is the solution to our problems when they're too lazy to hold the government accountable for misappropriating money and giving kickbacks to their corporate friends and future employers. Despite the problems, it's still better than having all of the roads owned by Ford and then anyone who wants to drive a Toyota on those roads has to pay a huge "wrong car" tax.. I mean fee.. or drive at half the speed or something else ridiculous. (you could call it road neutrality) I'm not even suggesting we should own the network. I'm not even saying we should "own" the dark fiber to each house. I'm suggesting we should make it so competition can flourish instead of being choked off.

You're not going to have it by making companies build out brand new infrastructure for every company. Completely eliminate all other barriers other than buying the lines and putting them up. That's still tons of money, even for a small area. In the old days a mom & pop ISP could start up by ordering a T1 and a few phone lines from the phone company. The phone company was the infrastructure. If there are 30 companies that want to offer service to a city do you propose all 30 build out some sort of cabling all over town? Don't be ridiculous. Can you imagine? Then most of them go out of business because there's not enough of a market to sustain that and billions of dollars sit rotting on the poles instead of being used for a good purpose.

I'm telling you. Fiber to the home with a colocation facility or facilities that they all run to. Put several strands so if someone wants to buy Fiber TV from Comcast, Fiber phone from Verizon and Fiber Internet from whoever else each company can have their own lines. Or hell, if they want all 3 from Comcast then they can just use 1 fiber line. If you get Internet from Mom & pop co and they go out of business then you can switch providers by subscribing to a new one and they will do what they need to in the colocation to move your fiber over to their system.

The only role in the government is, as the representative of the customers who are requesting the service, to set up relationships and take action when there's abuse such as price fixing or if the infrastructure company turns out to be a bunch of deadbeats.

Nobody is going to voluntarily build an infrastructure only company. It's a chicken and egg scenario, what use is it if no one is offering a service over it? What use is a service without the infrastructure to support it?

As an aside, If your only concern as a voter is how low your taxes are then you're part of the problem, not the solution. You should be concerned about what value your taxes are bringing you. You could be paying less taxes but much much more in other areas as a result. You'll never be able to pay as low taxes as the guy who can afford to make sure he's paying the lowest taxes.