In some areas customers can choose among competing providers to have their natural gas delivered through a single set of lines. I've often wondered how feasible it would be to have do something similar with Internet access: The government owns and manages of the physical network infrastructure, but users have a choice of private and/or non-profit ISPs to provide actual Internet service (ie, routing traffic in and out of the municipal network).

Obviously there are a lot of details to be worked out, but are there any significant technical reasons this couldn't be done?