I think this is overstatement as to 'turning it over.' DARPA paid for research and operated communications systems in furtherance of a standardized packet network. This was done largely with privately developed tech like commercial telephone wires, commercial modems, commercial minicomputers, commercial solid state RAMs, commercial storage tech. The benefit of DARPA's big funding boost was consolidation, sharing, selection of objectively reasonable choices like tcp/ip, and allowing international collaborators. This sped up the process of having a viable, unified internet wherein other researchers who were not even in the United States contributed tech like the web (on Next computers, with Next software stacks, Motorola chipsets, Sony CRT tech, etc).