It's funny because it feels the opposite here in the UK, with internet speeds increasing at a rate of about 20mb/s per year for the past several years (obviously only in major areas but quieter parts are getting faster at a lower rate). In fact, the rate of progress here has gone way beyond my expectations. There was a recent controversy about filtering UK internet, but in reality that's turned out to be a bit of a non-event and is only really an issue for those who don't pay the bill — but then parents have always had the option of filtering their kids' internet if they really want to, although that's not really something I believe in.
I'm not sure how it is in the US, but I've had the distinct impression from talking to people on IRC that the web infrastructure is pretty bad over there and fibre isn't nearly as common as it is in many other countries. Maybe that's also part of the problem: either a reluctance or an inability to make serious technological strides in tandem with the rest of the world (bizarre when you think about where a lot of the internet's biggest players come from), forcing them into borderline draconian measures like this to keep things running in the face of a vast capacity issue they're not keen to talk about. I guess the US's sheer size doesn't help either.