A random sampling of internet service prices around the world

Just replacing the central office equipment is enough to improve speeds for a larger and larger percentage of users served by the DSLAM in the telephone exchange.

The USA, being a technological superpower for decades, surely has enough resources to replace a few pieces of equipment in the CO and offer users something better.

This is very strange because the new equipment can actually lower costs for the ISP because it is more efficient, easier to manage, more reliable and more compact.

I do not have insight to understand the regulatory landscape and market conditions, however the more I think about it the less of a point I have.

I think you are right about the answer [2], I keep trying to find technical excuses but can't.

This is a sad thing really.

Especially since it costs the same [3] to run the networks in .. [eastern european countries], USA, Russia, Germany, France, Belgium, Australia. No matter the diversity of terrain, the vast scale of the territory, the weather conditions, population density, there is an analogue to USA somewhere, and they don't have it that bad.

[1] neglecting copper in favor of fiber

[2] "because the telecom companies are rabidly anti-consumer."

[3] in general the maintenance and personnel costs may differ due to regulation and market conditions but the equipment costs the same everywhere, and where there is a higher market baseline cost for labor, the ISP can raise the price of services

In my country, there are people intentionally staying on a cable ISP for their excellent support and the fact they carry non-government non-right-wing channels which are unwanted on other government-controlled ISPs (i.e. CNN affiliate). The cable ISP is slower and more expensive (up to 100% more) than FTTH at the government owned telco, but people really appreciate having problems fixed in a day after one call and not an agonizing process lasting months(!!) that often just ends with them cancelling your contract and waiving the early cancellation fee, and then blacklisting your location from getting service because it is problematic.

Also funnily enough we had that same problem with billing, it lasted for 18 months, during which time no correct bills were sent, no payments were logged and nobody's service was shut off for non-payment. The ISP mostly forgave the debts [1] of all customers because they couldn't keep track of it. I first because a user just as it happened and haven't paid a year due to them messing up my discounted rate and then just telling me not to pay and sending a corrected bill for 1,00 RSD (basically free) because they can't guarrantee they will log the payment properly. Hilarious really.

[1] and reported the biggest lost since 1980s when it was founded, but hey it's government owned, the people will eat the debt haha /s

The reason is simply because DOCSIS is working on a shared medium so in certain cases you have to wait for others to stop transmitting on your channel so you can transmit + there are much more unpredictable errors due to RF noise caused by having a lot of devices share a "single cable" (it's not REALLY single cable, it's split, but all noise will end up on the one feed to the CMTS) and also it's quite easy to get noise from neighbors.

Noise is often hard to solve (find the source of it), i.e. it's a household with a bad set top box power supply sending low voltage AC into the cable network.

Problems can be solved, and in some cities DOCSIS works very well, but often times it doesn't, and when it doesn't it's really difficult to fix it other than doing a node split (i.e. adding a new CMTS and moving half of the users to it) and proactively putting filters in everyone's house and controlling installations.

[1] more on DOCSIS compared to DSL