In a national system they would have upgraded you to fiber because it’s a good idea.
Sorry -- that's not going to work for me. Our lives are filled with "good ideas" that cost a lot of money and simply aren't worth it by any objective measure.
I do some work with the railroad industry, and I use it as a case study whenever issues involving public utilities, private companies, and network-oriented infrastructure come up. The railroad business would be a good model to use when dealing with these questions, and on that basis I think the "public utility" approach would be a disaster.
But the switch to fiber IS worth it by an objective measure. A better, more reliable, higher bandwidth phone system IS worth it. The problem, from a phone company perspective, is that revenue is basically inflexible. The phone company is going to make the same amount of money on that region regardless of the quality of service they provide.
Sure look at the railroad business, and remember how and why it exists. We as a country realized we needed a national rail system and paid an arm and a leg to get it. And it was great all the way up until we stopped thinking it was important (ie alternatives came to be) and now the system sucks. Had we waited until alternatives were in place to stop feeding the phone system that would be fine. But we didn’t. And frankly it’s still not there, as much as we like to tout the internet as the all creature an amazing amount of the internet is going over that phone company backbone. Backbone that is not corporately profitable to improve, but that is desperately in need of improvement.