A friend of mine tells me that one of his FC teammate's ISP enigmatically "jump connects" to several different cities before connecting to the server, which he solved by renting and connecting via a VPN.
Why this jump occurs is beyond me. But even with a VPN, the fact that his connection stabilizes a lot really convinces me that SE's server isn't half as bad as most complains.

Anyhow, I think Sephirah has a point. You can't just blame everything on SE.