So in ISP world, EU has better offerings than most of US, though US had a good 2020 when it comes to download speeds: https://fairinternetreport.com/research/usa-vs-europe-intern...

However, upload speeds are still a joke in the US - I can’t buy more than 35mbps up, period. That comes with 1gbps down (in reality that’s never stable, so more like 800-900mbps). At previous home I had options of two providers with one offering symmetrical 1gbps fiber - that’s fairly rare in US.

Costs are another issue - US ~$61 per month, OECD average is ~$37: https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/internet-costs-compared...

Now this is mostly services innovation, not telecom tech itself, but still has very tangible benefits to consumers and barriers to operating a business.

> how does your innovation work for you?

Well it has produced the top tech companies and (most of the) top research universities in the world. So pretty well.

And what exactly does the average citizen of the US gets out of this, given the above?

Not even the tax money of those "top tech companies". Heck, some of those come to us (e.g. Ireland).

As for their products, we can buy them just fine as well.

This. Facebook, Google et al are American but will do everything they can to lock profits in low tax regions outside the U.S and they're also hiring more and more outside the U.S If Facebook stopped being American tomorrow I'm not sure the effect will be noticeable.

anecdotal

I’m not claiming we are more innovative as a result.

As a result we have much better mobile plans for example. Every time I see a Ting ad I marvel at how expensive their plans are, and then they compare that to the likes of Verizon…