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If you were in the UK and your last mile only supported that speed, you might as well go with a cheap ISP.
http://www.uswitch.com/broadband
But Joe Blow internet user probably lives in an area covered by FTTC (i.e. BT Infinity) and could get 40 Mbps minimum.

how exactly do they delay all of these in all countries ?

You are right, Apple don't appear to be trying to delay every single Android device from every single manufacturer. But then again, they don't have to. If you check out the "Android fragmentation" graphic you will notice that the vast majority of devices are sold by only a few manufacturers - Samsung being the largest, with HTC, Sony and Motorola trailing. Apple has sued Samsung, HTC and Motorola - the curiosity is Sony, who haven't been sued yet. Why not is speculative: Why hasn't Sony been sued by Apple yet? But Samsung is clearly the biggest target, their Galaxy S line of phones is extremely popular and has outsold the iPhone almost every month in some of the largest Western markets (check the graphic at the bottom of this page that covers UK sales).

I'd rather just go off actual sales if Samsung actually released any.

It's not just Samsung - Apple also does not release its monthly sales figures for the UK and other regions. That's why all of the media cited figures are just estimates; the uSwitch mobile tracker is based on actual sales from one of the most popular price comparison sites in the UK, so perhaps it has more validity than quoting some random analyst company.

I don't know how things work in the US, but in the UK there are all sorts of ways of establishing a credit history which don't involve dealing with scummy companies like this.

You can sign up for a credit card from a company offering cards explicitly for people with bad credit histories. There's always someone prepared to offer credit cards to people with less-than-stellar credit and you don't have to buy a big item (with associated huge interest payments) with it. Simply buying a few small things and making the payments is a good start.

You can self-certify for a mortgage. Essentially you sign a form saying "I confirm I can make the payments on this". Again, you'll pay a higher interest rate - but there's nothing to stop you re-financing a couple of years down the line.

By the time you have to go to a company like this, your credit must really be shot to hell.

As I understand it Virgin didn't 'unilaterally drop' Sky channels, they and Sky couldn't agree on a price.

Virgin did quite well the recent YouGov/uSwitch Broadband customer satisfaction survey.

Maybe in your country, here in the UK I can choose my electricity, gas and water suppliers, and switch if I don't like them.

I'm guessing you're from the USA, for the bastion of the capitalism, you're markets in everything from ISPs to consumer credit, to utilities seem to be very underdeveloped if anecdotes from slashdot are anything to go by. Whereas here in socialist Europe, with our free health care and welfare state; the free market appears to be flourishing. In the UK at least.

Most importantly, brew your own beer. It costs around 10p a pint and can even taste nice if you get a good recipe. Checkout a brewing shop for what you'll need to get to start yourself off.

Just choose another carrier.

http://www.uswitch.com/

Same old phone, line and number but all your calls go via another carrier who do all the hard work for you.

e.g. Justdial.
http://www.just-dial.com/

Free evening and weekend calls but no extra flat rate charge and only 2p/min for daytime calls and you don't have to buy any special hardware or install software on a PC or anything.

The UK has a number of services to aid you in switching your energy supplier - these are often online services such as uswitch or saveonyourbills (and you can find even more at switchwithwhich).

So you get a name and address - can do that from the phone book, or use other means.

You create yourself a throwaway email account - ideally based somewhere that would be a complete pain to req any log data from. Maybe you also ensure theres a little more masking here - like covering up your web access.

Then go to a switch web site, enter the property details you are interested in - don't need the right name at present, just the address (postcode and house number - say SW1A2AA, number 10), and set them up for a new energy supplier - theres basically bugger all checking on this at the early stages.

You will then get from the switch website, or sent by email (thats why you need the throwaway account), confirmation of the details to change your electricity supply to the new supplier, and guess what, this includes the electricity meter reference number....

So there you are, name, address, meter reference, their identity is yours for the taking, without all that dumpster diving stuff. Is this neat or what! Whats more, its going to be very hard to get the meter reference changed.