>I always see these services talking about "crystal clear quality", but never latency, which is a shame. Maybe there is simply nothing they can do about it. I've noticed latency get worse and worse on the Internet since I started using it in the 90s and nobody seems to talk about it.

Well, the first problem at home is likely your wireless. Live in an apartment and you can pick up 30 other routers in your wifi search. Chances are you're going to have latency and re-transmit issues to your AP.

Second problem, your router. Most of them suck. If you're lucky and yours doesn't setup QoS/shaping rules. I use fd_codel on mine to attempt to minimize the amount of buffer bloat that occurs. In the race to make your internet 'fast' huge buffers act like buckets for data, which is really bad if you want your data instantly. And if you search buffer bloat you'll see a lot of people talk about it, very few ISPs want to do anything about it though.

Lastly, the one you can't do anything about is the path that your data takes to the remote user. If it is overloaded or has capacity induced latency there isn't much you can do, other than change ISPs maybe.