Say a road construction company wins the bid and gets a contract to work on a section of federally-funded road. I think it is likely they would already have some of the work, equipment or supplies sub-contracted out to specialists. Does it make more sense for them to own the entire supply chain for making concrete, from mining and refining the minerals, to mixing, delivery and pouring? Or does it make more sense for them to sub-contact out to a number of suppliers who they can call and say "I need $foo cubic feet of concrete, with $bar properties, delivered to $baz location at $quux date/time,"? I think the latter is more likely as it gives them more flexibility. Owning and operating the equipment and infrastructure to manufacture concrete has overhead costs like anything else.
Similarly, if laying fiber becomes a requirement of taking the contract to build the roads, I think those fiber-laying companies will find themselves subcontracted those projects.
You wouldn't believe a story about the costs, feasibility, impact, etc. of an IT project if the reporter only talked to people in the construction industry and not to any IT professionals.
As written it sounds like those IT projects devised by people who have no knowledge of the field, who imagine that their idea must be easy, who make and sign off on a plan, and only then get me involved. These are almost universally poorly conceived, unnecessarily expensive, and produce bad results. In fact, in those respects it reminds me of another great public networking idea, public, city-wide WLAN networks (and in that case too, many IT professionals drank the Kool-Aid without thinking through the details).
Also, when we talk about how easy it is - it is always easy when someone else has to figure out how to implement it, do the work, and pay the bill.