It's certainly not just a US problem.
The issue here is infrastructure, we don't have fiber rolled out everywhere yet, so many areas only have DSL as an option, which can be slow and somewhat unreliable.
They advertise connection speeds as "
Up to __Mb/s" rather than a specific speed.
My connection used to be an "Up to 20Mb/s" connection, but I see that they now advertise it as "Up to 16Mb/s" - which is a lot more in line with reality.
On speedtest.net my connection measures just shy of 15Mb/s down.
I know people with the same ISP in other parts of the country who get about 10Mb/s, though one does actually get the full 20Mb/s download speeds as originally advertised - I think he's in an area where fiber has been put in now though.
It's a far cry from the old 100Mb/s line I used to have (which was
actually 100Mb/s) but DSL is the only option here.
At least I don't have bandwidth caps I suppose...
