Long suspected as much. Not only do you pay more, you get slower speeds, as well.
The New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, compared Internet service in the US: Kansas City, Missouri (pop. 467,000), San Francisco and Bristol, Virginia (pop. 17,835) -- with large European and Asian metropolises, including London, Seoul, Paris, Tokyo, and Copenhagen. You can view the report here: http://www.newamerica.org/downloads/OTI_The_Cost_of_Connectivity_2014.pdf
While the city size might not be exactly comparable, some glaring facts did emerge:
- 25 mb/sec London-$24/mo,
- Kansas City-$41/mo,
- Seoul, Paris, Tokyo, Copenhagen and Prague<$40/mo.
- Lafayette, LA- $50/mo.
- Washington, D.C. $52/mo.
This report also implied that about 75% of American homes have only a single source for an ISP. That means that there’s no competition for that essential infrastructure. In Europe? Quite different: Governments try to encourage rivalries between ISPs by requiring them to share infrastructures. That doesn’t happen here.
Also, broadband in the foreign cities listed above is about 10x faster than equally priced U.S. plans. At least we aren’t in Mexico City. What I can’t believe is that such a critical necessity for education, science, technology and commerce isn’t incentivized nor encouraged.
I believe things should change.
There are plenty of Graphs on the report which is quite thorough. A small sample:
Source:
http://www.infopackets.com/news/9402/americans-pay-too-much-slow-internet-report