Part of the issue I see is because water and power are "pipes in the ground", and have regulated monopolies due to that inefficiency, yet the broadband/fiber "p

Part of the issue I see is because water and power are "pipes in the ground", and have regulated monopolies due to that inefficiency, yet the broadband/fiber "pipe in the ground" somehow dodged those rules. As an anecdote, I have an engineer family member working on undergrounding utilities. The power and water companies provide drawings showing which customers have what service from the power poles that will go underground. Comcast will not provide a list of their present customers, because they want to bilk the taxpayer to run the to-the-house service for even non-customers. So there is my family member, having to charge the city as they walk door-to-door recording who has service. This is one of those high-cost externalities that is not correctly captured by these "think-tanks".