I guess part of it is that there's the idea here in the US that everyone should have access to certain things like power, water, telephone, etc. There are a lot of universal service laws about these utilities and the internet is fast becoming another utility.

Worse is that with the internet you have to be hooked up to the central grid or else it's useless. A farmer in a rural part of Kansas who's tired of not getting enough electricity from the electricity company (not a fast enough connection) and paying power overages (bandwidth caps) has alternatives like solar, or buying a generator or whatever.

But when your internet isn't fast enough you can't just install 10gig copper in your house and solve the problem. Install your 10gig until you've got terabits of bandwidth all over your farm; you still can't use it in what most people would call a meaningful way to interact with the rest of the world.

The idea that some states have good broadband and others have terrible broadband and that this is acceptable is an oft-argued point especially once you take population density into account. And it's not a bad argument. The economics are completely real.

But once you try and make an analogy to power or water or telephone it gets a little easier to see why some folks might be up in arms.