Utilities can be privately owned. Indeed, many power stations and transmission lines are privately owned. It should be a utility, it just shouldn't be owned by the government. Australia would have to be the only country in the 21st century trying to actively undo Telecommunications privatization by re-nationalizing the telecoms infrastructure. It's like all the 'baby bells' getting reformed into the Mama Bell, and all the new entrants being told they are now only retailers of a fixed price plan. It's nuts. But you'll never hear criticism from most Australian tech people because they fervently hold out hope that it's all going to happen and they'll get affordable high speed broadband. Just like people grow old and die hoping their highway will get upgraded or their town will finally get connected by a train line.

The problem with government ownership (and particularly with the NBN) is that the focus of the organization transfers from cost-effective rollout to political points and favors. Those regions which supported the previous government were given priority for the rollout, despite them being areas of poor commercial return. The lack of return from early customers compromises the cashflow of the organization. Because the technology was selected with a one-size-fits-all approach - madness in a country the size of the USA with the population of the Greater NY area - commercial consideration was again ignored, right down to paying $11 billion to an existing Telco to pull up working HFC in existing areas.

Definitely a plan is needed - the original case was for the government to lay down the backbone in Fiber and let the Telcos complete the costly last mile in whatever worked best. But this didn't fit the grand 5-year plan so beloved of committed central planners so it was expanded to a FTTN vision - famously undercosted, underestimated and underperforming.

The result is a disgusting mess that nobody wants to own up to, and meanwhile, I'm sitting here with the exact same crappy connection that was here 10 years ago, and no progress because committee this and study that. Politically I'm in the wrong area, and the existing Telcos aren't going to upgrade my line because it's only going to get torn up and replaced (supposedly) sometime soon. They aren't even allowed to advertise 4G mobile as a competitor to the NBN because the government needs every single person on board to have a hope of making a $50 or 60 billion white elephant look remotely commercial.