Show me the Muni-nets!

As Om Malik wrote 'it has become highly fashionable to comment about Municipal Networks' , so, being ever so fashionable myself (ahem!) I felt strangely drawn to comment.
Municipal Networks are quite obviously a good idea, from the point of view of the community, as they provide ubiquitous internet access at no cost.
It takes a bit of vision to see where the benefits come in, but not so much that it's beyond the average town hall politician, so why does Om have so much difficulty with it?
Well, it's scary! If all the cities and communities decided that municipal networks were a good idea then where would we be? The telcos would be pretty much out of the retail business, unless they provided something of significantly higher quality at reasonable cost; something I find very hard to imagine from the telcos I have worked with.
With the right tools (that most local and national governments are, at least, attempting to build), then education, information, services and communication can be made available to all citizens at low cost. There are also more than enough private services that could be delivered on top of the network to fund it's operation however in my opinion this is more of an argument for partnering with a telco rather than competing with them (or introducing a new entrant).
There are problems in policing the uses to which the network is put, as well as the civil rights issues of being able to monitor people on the network, but the benefits could be enormous.
These are issues worth resolving or deciding to ignore (we can't police everything and we certainly don't have all our civil liberties intact), people can make of it what they will.
The communications world is changing and the network is drifting with tectonic certainty away from the services delivered over the network. There will be earthquakes, businesses on the fault line will be damaged or destroyed, and one thing is for certain: As a communications business you need to decide which side of the divide you are on.
As a telco, I would be re-evaluating my business strategy...
To paraphrase Bernie Taupin: 'If I was a voip provider, but then again, no, Or a man who makes content in a mobile device show
I know it's not much but it's the best I can do
My gift is my network and this one's for you
And you can tell everybody this is your network,
It may be quite simple (even stupid) but now that it's done
I hope you don't mind
I hope you don't mind that I sell a lot of VPN
How wonderful communication is, while you're in control'