[Magnetron]

The United State's internet infrastructure is garbage, all of its infrastructure actually. First world country with third world wages and third world standards in general. A backwoods bumfuckville in the middle of the war-torn third-world Balkans had 25 Mbps ADSL service 15 years ago when the average speed in the US was around 1 Mbps. Nuff Fucking Said.

I registered with a supposedly respectable company to finally receive something faster than the sub-megabit bullshit I've had for years and I got 1 Mbps instead of the 5 Mbps advertised. When I called to complain about this, they told me I'm not guaranteed 100% of the speed and that as long as I'm getting the minimum guaranteed speed (about 25% of the maximum) that everything is fine and dandy.
The problem is, I was getting this "minimum speed" 24/7, that is NOT how any reasonable person would interpret their bullshit advertising. And I'd get a different provider if that was an actual choice but since there are only 2 providers in my area, I couldn't do shit for nearly a decade until recently.

The government here decided to split up the monopolies but the problem is that one company owns the ENTIRE telecommunications infrastructure while the other owns the entire cable TV infrastructure so it didn't seem feasible. If the decaying infrastructure itself is garbage, then how would anyone provide better speed? Then it happened: new companies emerged that still used the same infrastructure belonging to the monopolies but because the government was subsidizing them, they could charge lower prices and better customer service. I asked for a loop-bond and if they could equalize my download and upload speeds, which they did. I don't have a super-fast connection but since it's about 10 times faster than before, I'm not complaining.

I'm not one who's normally pro-government but this right here proves that large corporations are just as corrupt and useless as big government. Lower taxes equals higher costs of living. Pick your poison, sheepies...