Oh yeah, low risk business where the government backstops any losses? By rights investors shouldn't expect very high returns.
Also yes with power distribution you have long tail network effects that make charging for service using pure market mechanisms essentially impossible. Hint, when the US stopped subsidizing rail by things like land grants and turning a blind eye to graft, they all went bankrupt.
It always amuses me when people complain that we're not being "fair" to monopolies.
The whole set up isn't fair. There's no market discipline on the transmission side, so there's no point in transmission being privatized at all.
It's clearly not politically feasible (yet) to push for nationalization but there's no reason to indulge their whinging either.