Comparing the US to Hong Kong or Singapore is ridiculous, the US is nothing like Hong Kong or Singapore. We need an apples-to-apples comparison, which is admittedly difficult. But hey, let's try anyway and see what we find. John Aziz and The Week cite
Ookla as their reference for internet speeds. Let's use their data.
Geography and population distribution obviously play a big part in infrastructure. The US is a large nation with dense urban areas and lots wide open empty space, so let's compare the US to other large nations with dense urban areas and lots of wide open empty areas. Canada and Russia come to mind. What do you know, the scores for the US (22.00), Canada (20.46) , and Russia (21.71) are almost exactly the same.
Economic activity surely plays a role in building infrastructure. The only "nation" with GDP comparable to the US is the European Union. Turns out that the EU speed (23.00) is very similar to the US speed (22.00). #3 on the GDP list is China (17.60) and we compare favorably to them.
Hmm, maybe we should compare based on economic development rather than total GDP. Ookla provides a handy measurement of speeds for all G8 nations (21.40) and for all OECD nations (21.1). Again, we find the US right there in the middle.
Why do Hong Kong (73.58) and Singapore (58.13) score so well? Well, they're both dense, urban, wealthy areas with advanced technical economies. Looking down Ookla's list, we see lots of other dense, wealthy, technical places scoring favorably. That includes Asian nations like South Korea (52.02) and Japan (42.16) and Taiwan (37.78), and most of northern Europe (mid 30's and 40's). So lets compare that to similar sub-parts of the US that are also small, dense, wealthy, and technical. New York City comes to my mind first, and if you drill down into the data you find most neighborhoods of NYC scoring in the 40's or 50's. SoCal and maybe San Fran seem to score a little lower than NYC, more in the 30's and 40's, but still quite respectable compared to the rest of the world.
How else could we slice the data? Eh... whatever. I'm done. So far as I'm concerned, US internet speeds aren't in any way substandard compared to the rest of the world, and any attempt to build up an argument around that false premises fails from the start.