Kind of like how U.S. telecom providers were given something like a hundred billion to deliver broadband around the country but didn’t hit the promised performance or coverage? The private sector includes Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T, not just Apple or Amazon, and you have about as much choice not to pay for them as you do the local government.
The key thing is not the sector but whether there’s an effective oversight mechanism. It’s a lot more productive to focus on those feedback loops than trying to assume any sector comes in exactly one universal quality level.
Problem with local telecoms is that too often, there is a local monopoly. The problem with the government is its always in a de facto monopoly position. It has little incentive to change except during a voting cycle turnover, and at most voters can focus on a handful of issues at a time.
Funny enough, it seems like SpaceX has the solution for this and it's rolling out as we speak: https://www.starlink.com/ . Space-based internet that actually works and is actually fast is a game-changer.
Let's see how the telecoms respond to competitive pressure. If anyone can get 100Mbps within a year, I'm willing to bet Gigabit fiber/cable will be available nearly everywhere soon.
The US telecom companies were not given something like a hundred billion dollars. They were never paid those sums and they were also not given tax breaks in that amount either. That's one of the great forever repeating myths on HN (it's useful as a propaganda item, thus the repeating). There is even an HN member that has been repeatedly correcting the myth for years, here you go:
The key thing is not the sector but whether there’s an effective oversight mechanism. It’s a lot more productive to focus on those feedback loops than trying to assume any sector comes in exactly one universal quality level.