In Australia the government a private company owned by the government largely owns the last mile (except where competitors built fibre first). All the backhaul between "points of interconnect" is owned privately.

As a user though you pay for bandwidth at the interchange because that's how the old privatised and divested government monopoly did it.

The model, last mile public utility but all the speed private wouldn't be all that awful if it weren't butchered by various vested interests. In theory the current last mile company will be sold once it becomes profitable.

Last mile ISPs bring your traffic between your house and an internet exchange somewhere in the nearest major city. Transit ISPs bring it from there to some other internet exchange in a different city where the opposite endpoint is. The premise here is that the government would handle the physical part of the last mile and then customers would either buy "internet service" from a transit ISP or from someone reselling transit because the transit provider doesn't want to deal with customer support and retail billing.

The line is a piece of copper or glass that ends in a port in a rack at central point. The ISP is providing the connection from that point in the building to their equipment that does switching, routing, and yes billing you.

Some operators do have their own infrastructure and most large ISPs have equipment in local exchanges and operate their own backhaul.

Lots of it is just about marketing though.

> Lots of it is just about marketing though.

But in that case, doesn't it make more sense for the government to just cut out the middleman and offer internet to consumers directly? What is the value-add?

The ISP company offers customer support, installation services and the fiber modem, and owns the equipment in the network closet that peers with the backbone.

They might even own the peering network closet (which is often a weatherproof enclosure with a backup generator).

Don't know how it works, but I do think that's how it should be. Municipality providers dark fiber from the CO(s) to every house.

From there, any ISP can rent rack space, and arrange their own backbone/uplink, and get wired to whatever customers they can. Municipality charges a fee to use the fiber, and that's it.

Muni provides the line to the CO, ISP is responsible after that. They can compete on their internet speed, price, support, and whatever else they want (Netflix box, email, low latency to game servers).

Muni could even add a "no-internet" free service that just provides access to city services, library, etc.

It is worth noting that in the US, there's a not-insignificant part of the country that isn't in a municipality.

> I do think that's how it should be. Municipality providers dark fiber from the CO(s) to every house.

We have a variant of that here. An indy company just laid fiber here but they don't provide service. Instead I have a choice of 8+ competing fiber companies.

Before fiber, I had 1 'choice' of ISP and paid $124/mo for 1Gb/40Mb w/ 40ms latency to the IX.

Now my choices include 1Gb/1Gb $49, 2Gb/2Gb $79, 10Gb/10Gb $199 w/ 4ms latency to the IX.

Wouldn’t that “no-internet” service actually run afoul of the newly reinstated Net Neutrality rules? Or is there an exception in it for non-commercial or governmental services?

> If the government owns the lines, what are private telcos... actually doing?

Providing Layer 3.

Just like the government owns the roads and highways, and lets UPS and FedEx use them for delivery.

The theory is that roads/fibre are natural monopolies, but the services that use them can be competitive. There just needs to be a fee for the upkeep of the infrastructure (but it doesn't necessarily need to make a (hufe) profit).

YES, roads, water, sewage, electricity, it could all work with this formula. It could all be added to the long list of things you pay for that are build and maintained by taxes. road service providers, water service providers, sewage service providers, electric service providers etc Picture it!