The original Gadget the atomic bomb

Of course but what you have to remember is that there trying to shift the cost of delivering content from the www site to the isp

It costs an isp money for backbone bandwidth and it costs an isp money for routers and infrastructure.

ISP's are A business like any other business they are in it to make money. They do this through the simple numbers game.

They buy a 10 meg pipe and sell 1 meg to 600 people.
Not all of the people will be using there whole 1 meg all of the time. Therefore this becomes an affordable proposition.

What people don't seem to understand is this is already a thin margin business. Which is why you see many isp's shifting to an advertising model to support there company.

Simply put you would put 90% of isp's out of business overnight if everyone tried to use there rated capacity 24x7. The networks where not designed to handle that sort of capacity. Sure you can get your 3 meg for your 500 meg download or your windows updates or that new cool video clip you wanna grab. but you can't use 3 meg 24x7 because taking my 10 meg pipe analogy if i had 3 customers using 3 meg 24x7 i wouldn't be in business very long.

if it costs me 700$ a month to buy 10 meg backbone and that's being sold to 3 customers at 3 meg a piece. that would put the end user cost at like 233 just for the bandwidth not including tax or anything.

So if you want your full speed pipe pony up for a dedicated circuit or stfu