That's not my definition of modern capitalism, I call that corruption. A corruption enabled by government agencies that enforce monopolies that no consumers want to exist.
I agree that in lots of places there are franchise agreements and in others, there are specific laws that deter municipal networks.
That said, you could argue that data networks are mostly a natural monopoly because it's not feasible or efficient to roll out several redundant fiber/cable networks.
Even if there were no franchise agreements in place, very few companies (excepting ones that have other revenue streams) would roll out a second or third cable/fiber network in a city where there is already one in place. Even if you managed to split the market and get half of the potential customers, you'd need to account for the cost of digging trenches and laying cable (which cable TV companies have long since recouped). Makes it hard to stay solvent at such a disadvantage.
It's why a lot of people think the ideal situation is for a single physical network to be built and then service providers pay for access and compete on service to businesses and customers. With physical networks divorced from service providers, the company or municipality in charge of the actual cable/fiber makes their money from maintaining and improving capacity so they can sell access to more providers. Providers compete by offering the best services and customer support in order to profit and pay for more bandwidth on the physical network.
But yeah, it's more complicated (in terms of both business and networking tech) but it's an ideal that many would like to move toward.
What you describe is how the power grid where I live is handled. That's one solution I would be more interested in than these monopolies that only seem to create horrible customer service, high fees, and poor product.
But in the end, I'm not sure what's the best way to handle it. I just know that many would agree that the current methods are not optimum, and possibly detrimental.
By letting the government build and own the infrastructure, then lease the exploitation of it to private companies, and have other companies do the maintenance. This has its own challenges too, but at least the monopoly is in the hands of people who can be voted out.
This model was used regularly for rail and power networks in Europe, but these have all been privatised in the past few decades citing "cost reductions". The net result is that our infrastructure is deteriorating, consumer prices are rising way faster than inflation, and critical infrastructure is now in the hands of a few international power brokers (e.g. the Dutch national telephone grid is owned by Carlos Slim).
If that's how it came about then I would be more apt to accept that. But in the U.S., I find it doubtful any current telecommunications monopoly came to exist without government involvement. A good chunk of that upfront capital and land requirement was given away by the government for promises those companies didn't keep.
Yet, you need money from the beginning, so you are now back to issuing more bonds, and perhaps, raising capitals with venture investors. This is basically the model of the 19, 20th century railroad race. Of course the government wasn't directly building the railroad, but they were the one who gave the lands and even troops to open up the new frontiers.
That said, you could argue that data networks are mostly a natural monopoly because it's not feasible or efficient to roll out several redundant fiber/cable networks.
Even if there were no franchise agreements in place, very few companies (excepting ones that have other revenue streams) would roll out a second or third cable/fiber network in a city where there is already one in place. Even if you managed to split the market and get half of the potential customers, you'd need to account for the cost of digging trenches and laying cable (which cable TV companies have long since recouped). Makes it hard to stay solvent at such a disadvantage.
It's why a lot of people think the ideal situation is for a single physical network to be built and then service providers pay for access and compete on service to businesses and customers. With physical networks divorced from service providers, the company or municipality in charge of the actual cable/fiber makes their money from maintaining and improving capacity so they can sell access to more providers. Providers compete by offering the best services and customer support in order to profit and pay for more bandwidth on the physical network.
But yeah, it's more complicated (in terms of both business and networking tech) but it's an ideal that many would like to move toward.