part of Tacoma Public Utilities back in the '90's. The city has decided just recently (in fact the cutover happens today) that they will no longer be the ISP but will hand that to a private company and still maintain ownership of the network. There have been various lawsuits and public hearings over the past year with this plan, including whether declaring some of the TPU assets to be surplus and leasing them to the private ISP was legal. They seem to have resolved that. What isn't clear to me yet is what if anything they will do to maintain or extend the network.

Suffice to say that just making the thing a public utility is not the end of the story. It might make sense for the government to own the cabling and hardware particularly if you can piggyback that cost on the electrical network maintenance. The experiences of places like Tacoma and Chattanooga, which I also understand has made high speed internet a utility, would be useful case studies about the pros and cons of doing that.