You have to remember that, compared to the US, Ireland is tiny. The majority of the US population does not live in large urban areas, who while New York for example might have lots of choices, Spokane probably doesn't.
If you live in a sparsely populated area the excuse is "well, it is expensive to wire you up because of distances". If you live in a densely populated area the excuse is "well, it costs a lot of money to put new infrastructure into a densely populated area".
In both cases, lots of other countries are managing to do both of those at far lower cost to the consumer than occurs here in the US. Ultimately the ISPs here in the US are just greedy, duopolistic fucks.
The only factor that determines the quality of your ISP options is having a competitive player in the market.