You might be right, I thought it was actually for adsl, because otherwise post-bells had to roll out fiber or comcast were the only high-speed isp.

The problem is most people can live on 25/3 or less, stick to youtube sd, email, web, etc, it'll be slow but not ludicrously so, and they won't complain much.

Not a lot we can do, the limit on bandwidth means we are stopped from creating services that need more bandwidth, which means they're no reason to get that bandwidth.

HD video is nice, but not a requirement for most people, and ISPs desperately want to keep their customers limited so they can either upsell traditional tv/voice or otherwise keep their customers from adventuring too far outside their walled gardens. AOL both helped deploy and was destroyed by the internet, modern ISPs don't want to see the same thing happen to them, and honestly most customers use a handful of common sites.

Not sure the answer to the monopoly thing,

• make it a publicly owned and operated municipal utility
• make the "last mile" publicly owned infrastructure and private service providers can connect to the data center that connects the last mile
• require that the company who owns and maintains the last mile can not also be a service provider over that last mile infrastructure

The last one is how Texas handles the power grid, so it would need a real regulatory body making sure the private last mile infrastructure is actually maintained, unlike the Texas power grid.

Ehhhhh https://youtu.be/LFhT6H6pRWg

Not just the Philippines. AT&T's broadband service in the USA comes with a data cap. One of the reasons why I dropped them. Always good to read the fine print.

400mbps down with Xfinity here, and I also get 10mbps up. I wish American ISPs weren't hired by Satan himself.