You just nailed it, I think yours is possibly the most important comment on this page. Roads, bridges, education, prisons, electricity, water, managing public lands/other commons, the postal service, and now communication infrastructure are all things that should be owned by the public. Putting control of communication in the hands of a few large oligopolies is undemocratic.

Since the most common objection to this is privacy, I propose that the government provide the infrastructure (fiber, airwaves, satellites, etc) and that the use of that infrastructure have strong privacy guarantees and the protections of the existing unalienable rights in the forth amendment of the constitution:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

ISPs already have strict privacy guidelines, and if anyone thinks that corporations act to insulate users from government surveillance, they are fooling themselves. The protections must start with government itself and require constant vigilance. With regard to the commons, the profit motive should be limited to government contractors in service to the people, not the other way around.

The public telephone company here, "state owned", was de-regulated decades ago.

What was once a state of the art network, the first all-digital telephone system, is now worse than what they're deploying in Eastern Europe. Prices have never been higher for a service that should be cheaper.

How do they even charge for long-distance voice calls these days? It's borderline criminal.