So long as governments exist you will need to pass your data through government-controlled spaces. You may produce your own electricity, you may create your own wireless mesh WAN spanning a continent even, but that continent might contain the US, and the FCC will come knocking on doors and knocking down you signal towers. You cannot operate on any significant scale without touching on something under the regulatory jurisdiction of nation-states. This is not a problem of imagination, it's the current structure of power. East Germans undoubtedly both imagined and were often aware of Trabant alternatives outside of East Germany. But their dominant power structure did not easy allow for home grown competition.

People like that have existed and yet in 100% of cases they’ve been outcompeted by and swallowed up by people who form governments. Funny that.

Individual's could not build nor maintain the infrastructure that underpins the internet, for that you need government.

What exactly are you proposing? Anarcho-capitalism or some variant?