More than 2,300 years before the common era, the people of the Indus Valley Civilization (now modern-day eastern portion of Pakistan) constructed the first public water, sewer, and road systems.
Later civilizations perfected techniques, but the residents and leaders of that area had to answer a fundamental question: what is essential to modern civilization?
IMHO, these days the Internet is indeed a vital public service.
Many businesses and government agencies make it very difficult to deal with them except by Internet. They strongly discourage using the voice telephone or postal mail; indeed, make it very difficult to do business with them that way.
Further, nowadays often the Internet is the only way of getting critical news, weather, or urgent community notices.
Many years ago the telephone was seen as a luxury, indeed, welfare recipients weren't allowed to have one. It was finally recognized that the telephone was essential and rules changed.
Unfortunately, one big problem with the Internet today is website bloat. Web developers constantly upgrade their sites, adding more and more bells and whistles. Not too long ago I had a modest home PC with a dial-up modem that worked just fine. But more and more sites added features and the modem and PC simply couldn't handle the volume of bits thrown at me to do fancy stuff so I had to buy a new computer and upgrade my phone line. None the less, today, my home PC with DSL is too slow and its web browser obsolete, again because of website bloat. IMHO, those bells and whistles are totally unnecessary to communicate information.
The American auto industry used to be criticized for its planned obsolescence, where consumers were pressured to buy a new car often. Now the computer industry is following the same business model.
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