In comparison, you get 1 Gbps symmetric fiber connection in most countries in Europe for under ~$30/month. In some, you even get it for under $10/month (like Romania, which has surprisingly awesome internet infrastructure).

Monopolies and regulatory capture. I can't get ANY wired ISP where I'm at. Even AT&T ADSL which was like .5Mbps and ~50% packet loss terminated service to our neighborhood, saying the copper is too degraded. Comcast, for some reason, told us that to wire the entire neighborhood would cost them $73000 dollars, but they won't do it. That was 3 years ago. I'd have paid them 4000 dollars since then for business gigabit by now. I have been kicked off of multiple MVNO's (not for my abuse, but because AT&T/Verizon terminated their ability to sell SIMs for modem use).

My only current option is T-Mobile's home internet service (via LTE/5g), which works well most of the time but has some pretty ridiculous outages at least once a week. I gave Elon my 100 bucks years ago when they said we'd have starlink available by EOY 2021. They're now saying Q3 2023.

These ISP's have us over a barrel in the states.

You can look at the profit margins. 11.3% for Comcast as of June 2022. That tells me they aren't simply collecting the difference between US and Romanian internet prices in profit.

Of course, far be it from me to defend Comcast, but this is basically just the concept of purchasing power parity (PPP)

http://irregulators.org/bookofbrokenpromises/

Bonuses and other remuneration will, but no executives are getting $5 billion annual bonuses there and ~$million bonuses won't move the needle.

Businesses without competition get fat.

However, Charter Communications is a competitor that is more of a pure play and their margin is 10.8%

Of course, the older the buildings are the more expensive it gets. Running a new line into a single family home is usually a single new hole from the local utility trench or utility pole, which often have existing rights of way and known contact points to do utility work. Running new lines in an apartment complex often requires opening walls and ceilings between, among, and inside units, which then consequentially means doing new drywall and repainting (and maybe high costs to color match historic paints). If the apartments are condos there's even more complex rights of way issues in needing to get the consent of individual unit owners for some of the work.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

Nah, that's just their excuse; most of the country's population lives in urban areas and they don't even bother running fiber or setting up cell towers in more rural areas aside from maybe along the main highways.

Remember, SaskTel (and MTS, before the government sold it to Bell) doesn't have a problem with charging reasonable rates or building out fiber (and turning a profit at the same time) and those are the lowest-density parts of the country. So no, the telcos aren't telling the truth.

I suspect that decisionmakers in the US think that symmetric connections encourage communism.

And, in my experience, they will slowly ratchet up the cost until you call in and complain or change your plan, so a negotiated 80 dollars slowly can become 160+

Come to Minneapolis. 1 Gbps for $70.