actually I will disagree with you... sorry
I used to use a free service that was overseas and I was in the states - had no loading issues at all and my members never knew it wasn't hosted in the states
You are right about abuse and x10 has put some new things into play that will help get rid of that.
Since the free services are sharing resources you will see slow periods.
I can assure you though that you cannot beat x10 Hosting; in regards to bytehost, they have way more problems than just their database servers I used them for a very short time
People need to keep in mind that free hosting is what it is: free; you
cannot expect the same uptime and service you would get from a paid hosting package, and the
services that x10 offers for free hosting which only requires you to log into the forums once every 2 weeks
cannot be beat by anyone else I assure you.
Cheers!
Edit:
If uptime and such is a
real priority then paid hosting is truly the only way to guarantee that