East Coast Ping Issues

I was just wondering what the most recent word was on fixing the ping issues for the East Coast.

As someone that's constantly striving to climb solo queue, and chasing the LCS dream (huge long-shot for me, but at least I'm honest with what I want, and honest with the realisticness of said want), the ping issues on the East Coast bother me.

When I started playing, I was getting a solid 80-90 ping, after a year, that number went up to 90-100. I took a 6 month break back in January, and came back to 120 ping every game. While I could say that "I was born into it, molded by it..." etc., that's kind of some manner of BS realistically. One of the common factors between high elo and low elo (MMR? Have we started reliably calling it MMR yet?) is ping. Which means that people from the east coast, unless they move to the west coast, are at a SEVERE disadvantage when it comes to chasing that LCS dream.

So my two main questions would have to be:

Why is my ping constantly climbing, even though my internet hasn't changed (it actually got slightly better recently after some infrastructure upgrades)?

What's the most recent word on fixing ping issues for East Coast players?

A third simpler question would be, is there anything that I can do myself to lower my ping to a reasonable level (at LEAST back down to the 80ish region)?