An article by Derek Slater, Policy Analyst, in Googles Public Policy BLOG, as well as an article by Timothy B. Lee for Ars Technica talks about a pilot project in Ottawa for customer owned fiber.
I'm still researching details, such as where in Ottawa this is actually happening. I found an article by Gary Kim where a developer, Société de Réseaux Dédiés Privés Inc, is selling fiber directly which is then connected to the City of Ottawa interconnect (See Municipal Access Agreement with developer).
While I don't think that telecommunications monopolies (phone or cable companies) should own this last mile, I'm not convinced it should be passed onto homeowners either. I live on a private road, built by the developer and now managed by a home owners association. This is a hassle that I would love to have avoided, and we were lucky enough to have the City of Ottawa expropriate the land which connected us to a mall and the main road which needed a street light -- we couldn't afford the liability insurance, leave alone the street light.
Having a home connected to municipal streets is just so much easier, as would having my home connected to a municipal managed high-speed fiber network. I don't want the municipality to be an ISP, broadcast or voice communications company any more than I want my municipality to run the grocery store, but I do think our basic communications infrastructure should be managed at least as well as our road infrastructure.
There is discussion on SlashDot about this story, with the two hot topics so far being the cost of ownership (what if it breaks, who deals with it -- management company? Is that really different than an ILEC?) and what tools to use to put the cables in.
I think it is great to push us beyond thinking that the only wires above and below our public and private property should be electricity (In Ontario, competitive on generation, government manages distribution), phone (legacy monopoly end to end) or cable/TV (legacy monopoly end to end).