My thesis on this is that instead of having a private company build and own the telecom networks (and have a monopoly in many regions), and then customers pay for it, we could save money as a community by just building it ourselves, like we once used to, and selling the services at cost (or less than cost depending what the infrastructure is, like roads or trains)
I remain pretty sceptical that privatisation has ever been a net good for the community, ever.