If only there were a way to spread that cost equally among the people who would benefit from it, and a legal structure for collecting that payment, representing the interests of the constituent people, and ensuring that the telco held up its end of the arrangement!
The other question that would be asked is, perhaps less explictly, is "do you want to drive [employer of X,000 jobs in the region] out of the state?". It doesn't matter if those jobs would be replaced by superior jobs at a publicly-operated telco, or if some of those jobs are complete bloat (and therefore paid for by inflated utility bills among all subscribers). Nobody wants to engage in that argument; it's a losing battle.
Yes, there's an easy answer to that, but when faced with the option of a short-term sacrifice in exchange for a long-term collective gain, people invariably opt not to take it.
More publicly-owned utilities should exist, similar to Chattanooga/Hamilton County, Tennessee.
The town has a much higher broadband adoption rate than the US as a whole despite being sparsely populated (under 100 people per square mile). It's also not a rich area with per-capita income under $32k. In the US, 71% of households have wired broadband, 89% in Massachusetts, and 93% in his town. So I'd say it's a pretty great success.
Since the article talks about South Carolina, I'll note that SC is the 7th lowest for households with broadband at 83% (that includes wired, wireless, and satellite). AL, WV, LA, AR, NM, MS round out the bottom 7 (MS being bottom). Massachusetts is the 9th highest with the top 8 being WA, CO, UT, CA, NJ, NH, OR, MD (WA highest).
That sounds rather oversubscribed.
I’m in the boonies and the DSL connection I had as a redundancy for a time was 7mbit down, and that’s by far the slowest of the options available to me.
Upping those 2G backhauls to 10G is simple and cheap, however.
Averaging 3 Mbps of usage does not mean the gigabit connection drops down to 0.5% nightly. The key here is for the ISP to have enough excess backhaul to account for the occasional burst above the 3 Mbps average. As long as there is sufficient headroom, nobody will notice the oversubscription.