This appears to be the base of your argument, but it is incorrect. Cable internet speed varies pending utilization among those who share the same copper.
I don't have a problem with big corporations trying to maximize profit. I do have a problem with the mis-conception that carriers have no other choice. If they choose to take money (increase revenue) by signing up millions of new subscribers, then they need to spend more money maintaining the same level of service. We go from unlimited data to a miserable 2gb. Something is wrong, and I can't believe people buy into this "data sharing" none-sense as if data is finite. Carriers need to actively acquire spectrum and build better infrastructure. The current state of radio deployment is a joke in the US.
The current state of radio deployment is also one of the collectively most costliest in the developed world.
Listen, I am equally in favor of blaming the carriers, both landline and mobile, of being far too slow to roll out media of any type.
The cost of covering the USA, geographically the largest and most developed of any nation, is immense. (Russia, India, and China have minimal infrastructure development in great swaths of land.) Our average population density is small, and comparatively we have far more pockets of sizable population with high-quality infrastructure than anywhere else in the world.
This costs, immensely.
That said, they are also greedy, and because of the costs and loss of profits for continued investments and locking in future growth, they drag their feet. To serve more bandwidth to most cell sites, from the Tier 1 and Tier 2 providers, will cost far far more. And even then, those providers are also hurting to increase bandwidth throughout their networks.
They all desperately need to upgrade, but we do currently feel it the hardest at the consumer level. Our local ISPs could upgrade their interconnects more and offer more to us (for less, ideally) to win in more of us over time... but that kind of infrastructure investment will be immense.
More than anything, their infrastructure deployment is almost always slow to keep to within yearly free cash on the books. Once given a go, they'll slowly lay out lines across their first identified, and then second identified sites, over the course of quite a few slow years I reckon, prior to ever offering new service tiers.
It's a more endemic problem than simply our immediate ISPs just offering more.
The cell network is no where near as developed as the home ISP, and cannot offer the same service tiers as home providers, not remotely, not if the users willingly gobble it up if given, such as you who use it routinely for home use. Each local site can only handle so much, and their regional links are only so large, and their national links also only have so much allotment.
It is willingly separated from the "home use provider" network type due to it having an entirely separated network infrastructure and integrated into the national grid with different bandwidth contracts. So it should not be used to the degree one would regularly use the home user provider, unless you wish to be a prick to the rest of the populace who would like to ensure the network is always available at the speeds they are used to, even when they rarely use 2GB a month moving around cherished memories and not slinging netflix from their phone to their TV instead of using local network.
They need to invest, but they also have a right to regulate usage... to a certain extent.
Remember that the proliferation of cell sites enables a higher actually delivered speed than most people are willingly to pay for at home. So this makes it seem better, and more robust. That is not so. Locally they can provide a lot if the entire local user base isn't thrashing the network. So you might measure 40Mbps. That metro-level network, and likely regional interconnects, cannot provide for a large percentage of that total network all achieving that speed consistently. In bursts for everyone, it's easy. With half the network utilizing Netflix for home or media streaming, even if only demanding 5Mbps from the distant media server, still represents significant traffic when multiplied by the thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands in larger regions.
As more young people who are apt to make use of these services are given access to these services, the bandwidth needs for societies is increasing exponentially, even still today. More young people = even more heavy users. It's becoming a part of society: heavy usage of media subscriptions such as VoD providers, more viewers using VoD from Netflix, more users of even the media networks online such as HBO GO, and high-bandwidth social favorites such as YouTube. The cost for American companies to keep up with this is truly astronomical. The profits to actually provide that to large percentages of our populace: even more astronomical.
It's going to be slow, it's always going to be slow. I don't think we could even get the type of progression desired even if the entire grid was government-owned. Local ISPs can be managed better when they are municipal utilities; I don't believe the government could better manage the overall network at the T1 and Tier 2 levels.
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