There's no way a private contractor could/would do that.
I haven't used a land line in a long time, especially for long distance, but aren't the rates different by state?
Perhaps, like with electronic connections, when the price difference becomes small enough, they can make one flat rate because the simplicity pays off more via customer satisfaction. But international calls, for instance, still cost extra.
If you want a government program to deliver mail to obscure locations at a loss, create a program to do that. There's no reason for the government to assume responsibility for delivering all mail, and especially no reason for it to make it illegal for others to deliver mail!
And especially, especially no reason to protect the program from being cut as mail slowly becomes obsolete.
Must government insist on solving 100% of the problem when it doesn't trust the free market to handle that 0.5% case?
It's not like the free market doesn't compete. UPS and FedEx are still around, for example, just not on bulk mail and first class. It also connects with other postal services in other countries, and reciprocity agreements are governed by treaties, making a true free market solution incongruous with the rest of the world.
PS -- the post office is the second oldest institution in the US, and government-controlled postal services go back to (at least) Darius I in Persia. There's more precedent for a privatized military.
In either case, I agree that the two go together. Perhaps there's just too much ambiguity in the term "privatization."