You can. It is just that the costs of pipes (wires) are so high that you can't both charge a reasonable price and pay for the pipes. This is why most farms are on private wells - $10k to drill a well is cheaper over 50 years than pipes to each farm. (Many Iowa farms are on public water not a well because wells in those parts tend to not produce enough water for a house's need - and they pay a lot of money per month to pay for those pipes)

This is why we say utilities are a natural monopoly. If you have the pipes/wires in place and even a little paid off you can undercut and competitor until they are bankrupt.

Even if there is only one set of pipes under the street, the owner of those pipes is constrained from acting in a predatory way if the market is free. They are disciplined by potential competition (if prices too high or lets the water quality drop, it suddenly becomes financially viable for a competitor to dig a rival pipe, or set up localized system, or offering water trucking to your site).

Under a government-granted monopoly, that threat is legally banned (except for maybe water trucking)