There's truth found in Ajit's comment, that Americans' internet infrastructure just isn't as good as other countries. Is that because of the regulatory climate? The ISPs receive a lease on the public spectrum; are they expected to meet a minimum service level of quality?
According to this source, the US rates low in many categories of internet access i.e. % of people over 4mbit, and average bandwidth:
There are two possible explanations of which I can think:
- The United States is a large country in terms of geographic area, which makes it harder to deploy and maintain high-speed networks unless you're already sitting on top of a major fiber backbone (and even then).
- The ISPs have no reason to improve things, since their local near-monopoly statuses means that customers have no choice but to pay for slow speeds. This is especially severe in rural areas. There are options like satellite and cellular, but both are heavily affected by local geography, and the former has pretty significant latency issues (making it less-than-ideal for, say, VoIP) while also being pretty expensive (satellites ain't cheap).
According to this source, the US rates low in many categories of internet access i.e. % of people over 4mbit, and average bandwidth:
https://www.fastmetrics.com/internet-connection-speed-by-cou...