In many countries the state owned the phone company.

If there is only 1 telephone company, either owned by the state, directly or indirectly, or even just a monopoly... what is the difference?

And who gets to tell the phone company how to operate?

We try and segment it into governments and corporations. But really there is no real differences between the two. They are all governing policies for groups of people arranged in a sort of heirical pattern. The big top level group, the one that managed to gain control of physical territory is the nation-state or perhaps more accurately the Government(capital G) of which. allocating control to various lesser groups. Including physical sub territories and for profit enterprises (The incorporation).

The point being, even in the most rampant capitalist[1](an economic policy favoring freedom of operation in it's sub groups) nation the for profit enterprises are licensed and regulated and if needed(see world war 2) controlled by the state.

1. As opposed to communism, an economic policy favoring fairness of operation in it's sub groups. Or fascism, an economic policy where no one knows what it is but every one agrees is bad. fascism really is hard to pin down, used as the default bogey man by everybody, but original Italian theory suggests it favors having the most successful sub groups run the state, which would be in the capitalist corner. however the largest wielders of the theory(1930's Germany) used it as a social fairness issue, which is in the communism domain.