Internet service in Los Angeles is among the slowest, most expensive

This fact always irks me. The United States, in general, has artificially low Internet speeds. And it turns out Los Angeles is about the worst, according to a new study. (Though right with New York City.) From Dennis Romero at the LA Weekly:

A new report, The Cost of Connectivity 2014, from New America's Open Technology Institute, concludes that L.A. has among the slowest, most expensive internet services in the industrialized world.

Consumers in places like Tokyo, Seoul and Paris can download a movie in seven seconds. In L.A. that same movie will take more than a minute to download, and the cost to do it even that slow is $299.99 a month, the report says.

The only U.S. cities that provided overseas-like internet speed and value—Kansas City, Chattanooga, Tennessee—had local-government-run service. Yeah, the big, bad government does this better than corporate giants, few of which have seen any upside to investing billions in faster networks.

In places like Seoul, the internet is actually subsidized. You know, because it's actually good for the people—and for the rapidly evolving tech business.