The big American ISPs like nothing better than trashing every new metric that shows the US slipping in the worldwide broadband rankings (turns out we're really number one). It's true that such claims are complicated and that the countries whipping us at the Internet tend to be small ones. And yet...

Even the largest and densest US cities don't see the sort of pricing found in other countries, as we were reminded this week by a bizarre spat playing out in the UK. Virgin Media, which runs a hybrid fiber-coax system, has just announced 100Mbps access starting this December. Big deal, you might say, since FiOS and DOCSIS 3.0 have allowed such speeds in (limited) American locations for some time.

But consider the price in a market where Virgin has to compete fiercely against an open-access copper (and now fiber) deployment from BT. Virgin plans to charge a mere £35 ($56) for 100Mbps access when ordered as part of a bundle with cable. When purchased on its own, the plan goes up to £45 ($72).

Rival ISP BT has criticized Virgin for this new plan—on the grounds that it's still too expensive.

In a statement sent to several European press outlets, BT took a shot at Virgin for not having to open its network to rivals. It added, "Take up is as important as availability, however, and we would question why Virgin is charging such a premium. Its new service is more than twice the price of BT's fibre product, so we are surprised by the high price when most family budgets are tight."

Does reading that make you want to weep? If the answer is "no," consider the following two graphics. Here is Verizon's listed FiOS rate chart when Internet access is ordered without a bundle of other services. Note the price of the 50Mbps tier, which is half the speed of Virgin's:

And here's Comcast's 50Mbps standalone pricing, offered in the Chicago area:

There's a reason that American ISPs aren't the coolest ISPs in the world.