The Sorry State of our Internet

    Severe lag, downloads that take literal hours and sometimes the whole day, loading for what seems to be hours, disconnecting from a google meet because your internet decided it wasn't feeling it today. We are all familiar with this, more than likely it has happened to you many times in just this week. Why are we suffering all of this wasted time when other countries like Japan and Korea have nearly twice the internet speed that we have on average. Not only is their internet faster but also cheaper than ours, maybe not by a lot but when it's twice as fast that a huge difference. That's not even mentioning the horrid customer service some of our ISPs (Internet Service Providers) have(looking at you Comcast). How did we, the first country to provide widespread internet access to its citizens, fall so far behind?

     Well, it happened with massive amounts of mergers that created monstrously huge companies that dominate the market. Then, when only a few remained, they divided up the markets so that there was minimal competition between them. That way they never had to improve what they offered because there was no alternative, they controlled the market and since they were technically separate companies it was an oligopoly, not a monopoly, and therefore legal. This isn't right, this undermines the principles of Capitalism itself. How can we fix this? Is it fixable? I don't know because I think this is something that only the people united can solve. What do you guys think?