Kind of a tangent, but it frustrates me to see when a company makes its decisions based on the desires of its shareholders (by legal obligations or otherwise). The way I see it, this behavior only serves to weaken a company. Sure, the shareholders get their 5¢ dividends, but it's usually at the cost of a superior product offering.
Capitalism, man…
(Please take the following without any hint of political bias.) A government, on the other hand, builds infrastructure that isn't intended to have a return to it that's valued in money. Instead, that infrastructure benefits society in other ways. Arguably, building a network that functions as a "dumb pipe" where others can provide services on top of it--akin to a road--would allow greater competition in the business of moving bits because competitors would be freed from each of them expending and needlessly duplicating the others' infrastructure costs.