I think that's a good argument for why municipalities ought to, at the very most, maintain the bottom-layer infrastructure itself and not try to actually operat

I think that's a good argument for why municipalities ought to, at the very most, maintain the bottom-layer infrastructure itself and not try to actually operate services over it. Somebody in Shrewsbury probably thinks the services and price structure they're offering is reasonable, but that "somebody" probably doesn't have the knowledge of the market or interest in making the ISP a success that an entrepreneur would. As I said in another comment, there are good arguments in favor of publicly-maintained roads, as an alternative to having multiple parallel toll roads, all poorly maintained; but there are also good arguments why the government doesn't own all the vehicles or operate all the services that run on top of those roads. A government-run trucking company would likely be rather unpleasant to do business with.