It's absolutely true that ISPs in the US are horrifically anti-competitive, and also that they should be treated as utility carriers, like electricity companies, not as "optional" services.

But that said, it took more than forty years to electrify the entire United States[0]. "The internet", as we think of it, hasn't even existed for 35 years yet. (Yes, I know there were networks before that that the current system arose from, but that's hair-splitting. I don't think the kind of Internet the average person might even consider using existed before, generously, ~1995-1996.) Yet, 95% of US adults use the Internet, implying a penetration at least as high[1].

The median Internet speed in the US is around 250mbps down and is in the top 10 in the world[3].

The problem is that access and speeds are not evenly distributed, not that we can't get 22gbps symmetric down/up. We don't need to give people in cities faster Internet; truly, you do not need that speed to do day-to-day tasks. You don't even need the 1gbps down/150mbps up that I have. What we need to do is make sure people in rural areas can access at least the median speed.

That said, I think we could give it another 15-20 years and see where our country with around 36 times the population and 238 times the landmass is at in terms of speeds.

[0] https://www.christenseninstitute.org/blog/how-the-history-of... [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-bro... [2] https://tachus.com/internet-speeds-usa-vs-the-rest-of-the-wo...