Could the US use improvements in this area? Absolutely, and I want to be clear on that point. But what I consistently notice is that people, particularly those who have either never left the US to experience other parts of the world, or else those from smaller countries who have never traveled across a single country as large as the US, have no appreciation for just how difficult of a problem the US faces as compared to many other developed nations, simply due to its massive size.
It would be one thing if the argument were solely that people living in Story, Indiana or Nothing, Arizona couldn't get broadband speeds.
While that is an issue, it's not what causes much of the complaint about the state of internet services in the US.
I live in Seattle, within the city limits. I can't get better than 4.5mbps down on a good day, and certainly not in the evening when everyone's watching Netflix, short of ponying up for a business line to the tune of substantially more expense. Five years ago, I lived within spitting distance of the Google campus, and couldn't get better than 1.5mbps down. These are major cities, densely populated, with all the infrastructure right there.
By comparison, when I left Japan in 2005, my bare-bones residential service -- the cheapest, slowest, least-of-everything-and-still-be-online package gave me 18 mbps for around $30 a month. And it was scheduled for an upgrade, at no cost to the subscriber, to 24 mbps two months later.
The key difference? Competition. For all the malarkey about free markets and rainbows, the US market sucks for internet services. A handful of companies have effective geographic monopolies (or at least very small cartels), giving them leverage to jack prices and keep services at the bare minimum. In Japan, the kind of lockdowns that are the status quo in the US aren't possible due to an effective regulatory regime, necessitating that companies actually compete for consumers' business on the basis of service and price. The differences are amazing. Or depressing, depending on where you live.