A cable company builds physical lines into a specific region and only sells there. IPTV skips that entirely and rides the internet connection you already pay for, which means a provider's office location barely matters to how the stream reaches your TV. What matters instead is your own ISP's speed to your house and the provider's server capacity during busy hours. Two households in the same city can get very different results from the same provider if one has a stronger connection than the other, so 'local' tells you almost nothing about the actual experience you'll get.

This is the part worth separating from the location question. A catalog can be large in total channel count while still being thin on the specific local feeds you actually want, or it can label something as local that isn't what you expected. Marketing copy and an actual live stream are not the same evidence. Before you buy, load the trial and check the exact channel you care about, at the time of day you'd normally watch it, rather than trusting a written list. That single test settles the question faster than any description can.

Yes, but indirectly. Distance to a provider's server and your ISP's congestion during peak hours both shape how a stream performs, and both of those do shift with where you live. That's a different mechanism from a provider being 'local' to you in any marketing sense. The practical move is to test during your own busiest hour, usually evening, rather than assuming a provider headquartered nearby will automatically perform better. A well-run provider with global routing and 190+ countries of reach can still serve your specific address fine, because the routing, not the address, is what does the work.

Drop location from the checklist and use what actually predicts a good experience: price, refund terms, and a live test. A flat $10 a month on a 12-month plan next to a typical US cable or satellite bill of $70 to $130 a month is the honest cost comparison. Add a short paid trial, a written 7-day refund window, and a test of your specific local channels during peak viewing hours, and you have a real basis for a decision instead of a guess based on where a company happens to be registered.