My perspective is that if the government paid for the creation of the infrastructure, even in part, there is a strong obligation to the taxpayers who funded it to represent their investment.
Not: "Okay, thanks for building that for us. Now it's yours."
This would include literally everything in history. Past, present and future.
And "representing the taxpayers investment" is what the FCC is doing, always. How dare you attack America's proud strong democracy.
As to natural monopoly, what specifically do you take issue with? Literally by definition they(and public utilities) would categorically fit the bill.
A natural monopoly is a monopoly in an industry in which high infrastructural costs and other barriers to entry relative to the size of the market give the largest supplier in an industry, often the first supplier in a market, an overwhelming advantage over potential competitors. This frequently occurs in industries where capital costs predominate, creating economies of scale that are large in relation to the size of the market; examples include public utilities such as water services and electricity
Natural monopoly is not to say no competitors exist, as you could theoretically argue that you don’t have to use your local energy company, you can cook by fire, heat your home with heating oil, move into a new home elsewhere, or buy solar panels, but that is not a viable option for many people.
Except I'm disputing the basics of the notion and concept. Even in their current state public utilities are often not even local monopolies other than entrenchment by regulatory fiat. I can't buy electricity from other companies for the same reason I can't buy cable services from other companies. Let alone electricity that is specifically produced by a specific method by said company.
I can pull up the same history for "public utilities" that I did for phone companies. (Although it was done at the state level and remains mostly so.)
This circular definition and concept would allow for the idea that AT&T was a natural monopoly in the US and remains so including in broadband connections. Much of it has obviously been upgraded during the period of the split up and reassemblage of the Baby Bells into global conglomerates, but DSL, the most popular form of broadband provider, operates (or did depending on where you live) on the standard pre-existing telephone lines and copper that AT&T installed throughout the 20th Century in the unused frequencies telephones rely on.
Interestingly, Enron's entire scheme and the rolling blackouts it caused actually relied on this kind of patchwork regulatory system which created local monopolies for them to use the prices against each other when California altered its regulations to require lowest prices for consumer providers including versus out of state companies while also outlawing those companies from actually owning the power required which remained under a different regulatory arm.
I never claim to have answers or utopian plans because I'm not generally interested in becoming a central planner, but I'll admit that a central pool fund which constructs and maintains infrastructure (but doesn't provide services) that all providers pay an entrance fee to for access sounds like the best "out" available, especially in the case of cable and fiber optics to the home. Funny enough, this was actually being proposed by the industry itself when broadband expansion looked too expensive in the late 1990s/early 2000s, then mobile phones completely shredded up and disrupted the whole equation. And as I noted, the mobile industry has actually stumbled into a form of this.
Since we're talking about communications infrastructure, this is just a benji digression not truly related to above, one of the things I've been quite interested in since 2008 is what the trading exchanges have been doing producing their own private "secret infrastructure" between Chicago and New Jersey, the whole thing is pretty fascinating. And semi-nuts in how we're already working for the machines demands as humans can't perceive the time differences these are intended to shave.
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