[pavlov]

...competition between providers which drives prices down and quality up?

Does it necessarily? Corporations are looking for profit growth, and the customer will pay for that.

Imagine a service where a public provider is replaced with three private corporations. Superficially there's competition and freedom of choice... But what if the three companies all operate at 80% margin, are constantly squeezing on quality to drive the margin even higher, and they are owned by multinationals that spend enormous amounts on lobbying to prevent new entrants in the market? It's easy to see how both price and quality can be worse in this case than it was with the single public provider.