Maybe I don't know enough about American Internet (Destiny)

by narcogen , Andover, Massachusetts, Friday, February 05, 2016, 13:37 (3212 days ago) @ someotherguy

Are your prices particularly bad? I know not everywhere has fibreoptic yet, but my friends have no trouble at all on non-fibre. So I can only assume moderately good Internet is extortionate, if bad Internet connections are so common?

Actually, they are. Bad cable or DSL are pretty common. In areas less dense than suburbs of major cities, many times wireless is the only option. There are areas where optic is not available at all, and in some of those areas DSL is no longer being offered.

If you're lucky, you've got one DSL operator and one cable operator to choose from. If you're in an upscale market, you might get decent service from one of them, but if you don't, changing operators because of bad service-- slow speeds, unreliability, packet loss, etc-- moving to another provider for many simply is not an option, other than going wireless.

In many cases it's not necessarily extortionate, it's just that in many areas there is a lack of options and a severe lack of competition.