Read a little about population density.
And sure, every one of those "evil" companies should give away free stuff... You start first, go to work and demand not to be paid for what you do. Oh, wait, probably you are not working anyway...
You keep going on about population density as though that actually justifies imposing limits on traffic or most of anything else that is actually happening. It doesn't. Sure, there's less incentive to get the infrastructure to cover sparsely populated areas. But once said area is covered, especially since there are so few users, given current technology, there is NO technical justification whatsoever regarding traffic limits. None. Higher ping/lag because of distance? Maybe, if they use obsolete equipment that was due to be scrapped a couple of decades ago. But traffic limits... just no... Heck, not even speed limits when so few users are serviced.
And yet, 'Merica has all sorts of limits imposed by ISPs all over the place, and ridiculous ones at that. If anything, densely populated areas would be the place where you'd ever encounter traffic so high that setting some sort of limit would theoretically, and at first glance only, make any sort of sense. Real life practically proves that DOESN'T happen though. The technology can easily handle the load, even in the U.S. of A. (as is clear from previous posts made by other users right on this topic).
But let's take a rather extreme example: Bucharest, Romania's capital city. You get 1Gbps fiber for a measly $9.5 (taxes included). You can choose from either one of five major ISPs. Although some of them don't cover some areas of the city just yet, you can still pick from at least three anywhere you may be. Either way, getting 1Gbps fiber connections is nothing and this service is available to literally everyone. And since you're so caught up on population density, you have about 8449 people per kilometer squared, that's about 21882 people per mile squared. New York has 26403 people per square mile. Managing the sheer amount of traffic requires some serious routing hardware along with sheer bandwidth. Cables aren't the issue here anymore. But what limitations are there in place for landlines as a result? None whatsoever. Speed? Hell yeah!!! Anywhere, anytime. Basically, you can use your internet connection whenever you want, for as long as you want, however you want. You can max out the damn thing 24/7 and nobody will bat a single eyelid. The only real bottleneck for Romanians nowadays are the speeds that can be sustained by the gear of the content providers (although Steam does a pretty good job, for example).
Now let's have a little look at the hardware. It's mostly the same hardware U.S. companies use. It's not like we get a price cut because we're from the EU or anything. Your circular logic regarding services being crap because the cost for the infrastructure for remote areas is high doesn't hold up: major population centers still get the crap services and crap limitations for ridiculously high prices that are in no way justified by the cost of the hardware. Sure, wages are a lot higher in the U.S., but saying that the entire amount the users pay goes into wages is like saying that the purchase price of a product should only cover manufacturing costs.
Let's get real here. I don't know what you think about Romania, but business owners here are even more resolute about getting the highest profit they can. What you're all (maybe willfully) ignoring is that what we get here in Romania was made possible by companies having to actually compete to attract users. What y'all get in the U.S. of A. is a result of collusion, price fixing and price gouging. That is, ISPs there have clearly made an arrangement NOT to compete to anywhere near the extent of their possibilities so that they can invest the bare minimum into the networking infrastructure/equipment/etc. while keeping prices sky-high. Cue everything Ferengi.
Y'all probably need a couple more decades of this to realize something that's obvious to people from ex-communist countries: progress won't happen if there's no incentive for it, the lack of progress leads to stagnation, which in turn leads to extinction. That's what happened to the commies: they couldn't compete because the system didn't reward those with the will to strive and improve. They fell behind technologically and when the gap was wide enough it led to the collapse and extinction of the entire system. Finding excuses for the companies' blatant anti-consumerist behavior does the same thing. The capitalist system only works so long as profit is a reward for competitiveness, which can only be gained and sustained by constant progress. People should enforce this by voting with their wallets, but this is impossible without the proper education. With the collapse of education, people can no longer enforce their end properly and that's when you need regulation: laws to ensure that companies hold up their end of the bargain.
And what do you do? You choose to empathize with companies and blame people, mistakenly thinking that as long as there's profit, everything works fine. And when the fall comes, and come it will should you stay this course, you won't even see it coming. It's not democracy that failed you, but your inability to empathize with humans and your over-eagerness to find excuses for corrupt behavior. Thieves have to make money too, not just companies, but you're far too willing to forgive a company for breaking the law.
Later Edit: Just for a bit of background, I work for one of those huge American corporations and part of what I do is to handle the local side of networking projects at all stages in Romania. I work with a lot of top-tier equipment and experts and I've been working since I was 19, which was a rather long time ago.
This is how it should be done. If you make a internet access a utility like electricity and water, then it becomes mandatory for everyone to have internet access - in other words, exactly what Net Neutrality intends to achieve. It also allows you to have a government company that is responsible for building out and maintaining the network, which creates guaranteed jobs - ISPs can only rent parts of said network.
Alowing ISPs to build and own their own parts of the fibre network is a nice idea, but the problem is that they're never going to make provision for getting fibre to rural communities, because it isn't cost-effective. If you make internet access a utility, and require providers to set aside money to ensure rural communities are connected, then nobody gets left out. Fees overall will be higher, because the urban areas essentially end cup subsidising the rural ones, but that's the tradeoff you make for equal access.
As for Cox's "fast lane" service, it's not even snake oil, it's worse: they are essentially deprioritising gaming traffic for no other reason than they can, then charging people to get back to normal priority. Net Neutrality will prevent that too.
You, Sir, have the right idea here.
