I am curious: who operates the "publicly owned" networks? I think having having the government lay fiber while they are already doing work on the electric infr

I am curious: who operates the "publicly owned" networks? I think having having the government lay fiber while they are already doing work on the electric infrastructure is an obvious thing to do. But I would be extremely hesitant if the government is the one who owns and runs all the networking equipment (routers, switches, firewalls, etc).