I won't go into too much detail, suffice to say that the "Support" offered by my ISP has devolved from "Uneducated 'tech' enters search term into diagnostic knowledge base and reads from script that displays" to "Uneducated 'tech' executes diagnostic software that connects to customer's PC/modem directly does all the work for him/her, and reads from script that displays". If I'm going to have to struggle with getting technical support from a dumbass with no training, I'd like to be able to do it with someone who speaks my own language natively.

Surely other ISPs are available

I think I would have taken advantage of them if that were so. But it is not, and they are not, so I can not.