That’s true. In my area Comcast’s lowest tier is 50 Mbps which was plenty for me, but my upload speed was only 3 Mbps and backups took forever. So I upgraded to the 100 Mbps plan for the faster upload speed - now my upload speed is 6 
I would really love it if the Feds made all these ISPs Common Carriers under Title II of the Communications Act.
My gut reaction is to agree with your sentiment … but I wonder about the unintended consequences. Government regulation tends to be heavy-handed and stifling over time.
What could possibly go wrong? Would this bring back features of the old days of the landline telecom monopolies? I vaguely remember that the telecoms were very slow to adopt new technologies. Customers were required to use only telecom-provided equipment - rotary dial phones, then later touch-tone phones (at extra cost, of course). As new technology appeared, the telecoms used the newer technology to gouge customers with outrageous prices for newer services (caller ID, call waiting, forwarding, etc.).
One answer to the bandwidth problem is competition from multiple providers. My daughter recently bought a newly-constructed home. She was able to choose between a cable-company-provided internet service and a fiber optic internet provider. She of course chose the fiber optic ISP and now has symmetrical 1 gb/sec upload and download service with no monthly data cap. In my opinion, that type of service is mandatory. I would never buy a new home or move to a location without that level of service, either from fiber optic cable or maybe a new wireless technology.
Let’s start by undoing all of the laws which ban municipal broadband because the ISPs bribed, sorry, “lobbied” the laws into place that prevent competition.
Because nothing says “free marketplace” like blocking competition.
Yes, this is not unusual, and things are changing rapidly … even for a newly-constructed home by a major national homebuilder in 2020.
Coax is becoming obsolete, at least for distribution within the home, and old-style phone lines are already obsolete.
To continue the story in my reply to @WayneG above, I helped my daughter to specify, and later modify, the communications wiring in her new home last year. The large-company homebuilder no longer installs telephone-only lines but instead installs communications “drops” containing user-specified ethernet and/or coax lines connected back to a central “structure box”. Flexible conduits (“smurf tubes”) are installed to the attic and to an outside location for the ISP connection.
Reflecting your similar experience, I moved aside the now-obsolete coax cables in the structure box and installed a cat6 patch panel for the cat6 ethernet cables. I then connected a router with its wifi access point and a second wifi access point in a remote room. Result: ethernet connections at strategic locations throughout the home and good wifi signal everywhere.
Telephone and coax cables are simply not needed, as noted by your 17 y/o son. It’s remarkable how young people can see future trends when not encumbered by legacy technologies.
Even as early as 2002 it was clear that telephone wiring would be obsolete. When my own home was built in 2002 I specified to the builder that cat5e ethernet cable be installed to at least one location in each room in the house (in lieu of what would have been telephone lines in most cases), all wired back to a central structure box. These cat5e cables could be terminated/connected to serve as either telephone or ethernet cables. Over the years, all of the “telephone” connections were discarded and most of those cables were re-purposed to ethernet. BTW, even the older cat5e ethernet cables, if properly installed and terminated, can support 10 Gb ethernet speeds over limited distances.
I agree, but at some point in order to solve a problem you occasionally have to take a risk.
Around 20 years ago I had two options for internet service, Comcast cable or ATT DSL. Today, despite moving to a new location I’m still limited to Comcast or ATT DSL. Comcast’s speeds have increased, along with their prices, and they have added data caps. ATT DSL tops out at 25 Mbps.
Meanwhile in Chattanooga Tennessee their local electric company introduced 1GB residential service in 2010, 10 GB residential service in 2015, and today offers 300 Mbps service for less than $60/month and 10 GB service for $299/month.
I’m ready for some heavy handed regulation if it breaks up these monopolies and allows competition.
Yeah, I noticed I was being pinged every few minutes by people trying to brute force into my server when I had port 22 open to the world. Now that it’s an actual cool number (ok, fine, it’s 42069) that never happens. The brute-forcing would never work. But I don’t like it!
We never would have had the commercial internet without telephone companies being common carriers. The FCC required AT&T to allow third-party equipment in the Carterphone decision, which led to modems (as well as standards like the telephone jack: AT&T wanted to just keep hard-wiring everything), and post breakup, local telephone companies petitioned the FCC to cut off / charge very very high rates to dial-up ISPs (they were denied–and they wanted to treat dial-up ISPs like competitive long-distance carriers).
Communications lines running over public rights of way, in natural monopoly / high infrastructure cost industries, are typically common carriers, and of courses the Obama FCC formally classified ISPs as such before the Trump FCC reversed it. (The current FCC is still short a member and thus deadlocked, so it can’t make any big policy changes until that changes.)
I ran into a gotcha with my mesh network and my switch.
My Deco satellites would not connect through the switch for a weird backhaul, and TP-Link says some switches do not follow the standards, causing this problem.
I have just bought a cheapish TP-Link switch, so hopefully that will help me out.
(I tested a direct wired connection, and that was fine)
Something to be aware of when mixing brands.
Quick follow-up: I got my new switch today, plugged it in, now everything works perfectly.
Is a wired backhaul just connecting each cupcake via ethernet?
Yes! I caught this too. I can’t wait to get a gigabyte internet connection at home like the cool kids in Southern California and Tennessee 
“Home Networking” episode was great timing for me since I’ve been working on fixing our situation. Since the episode I have
*run Speedtest App tests on different configurations (from ISP modem at wall, from Ethernet jacks, on both WiFi networks various places in apartment)
*mapped which Ethernet ports go to which cables on the ISP modem and wall jacks (but just by looking at the lights @hmurchison, no VDV Device!)
*bought a Synology MR2200AC Mesh Router to join our Synology RT2600ac router.
*identified all devices on WiFi/Bluetooth networks by MAC address/Bluetooth/IP numbers.
I am reading this thread to avoidxxXX gin up courage for pulling apart our system. Cheerfully: DH is out for the night, and will not be happy if I destroy the Internet while he is working from home! At beginning of pandemic our router was moved from its bedroom connection to living room to improve the signal… two Wi-Fis.