> I do see where he's coming from though but I don't know how to counter those arguments as I don't know the history of how all the fiber got laid and who actually "owns" any of it. It seems like the phone lines or water that it's a public good at this point.
It depends on who laid the fiber. In the context of cable companies like Comcast, almost all of the fiber was built with private money. Cable companies were historically not regulated as telecommunications carriers, which means they didn't get whatever subsidies were available for deploying telephone service to various places. In fact, the opposite is true. Municipalities generally treat cable-company contracts as a way to get freebies. A standard contract will require the company to pay 5% of gross revenues to the municipality, plus various goodies (wiring up municipal buildings with fiber, lump-sum contributions, etc.) That is on top of the rental fees paid to the power or telephone company for space on the poles.
That is very different from how, for example, water and sewer lines are built. In almost every county, water and sewer lines are paid for by mandatory fees paid to the county when you build a house. Most people don't realize it because it gets rolled into the price of the house. But in the county where I live, for example, the builder pays about $25,000 to the county in fees to hook up to the public water/sewer system.