Honesty is the solution to tomorrow's Internet video problem
I, Cringely

At the heart of this video distribution problem is the lie that ISPs tell about how much bandwidth we are really buying. While you may think your 1.5-megabit-per-second DSL service or your 3-megabit-per-second cable modem service is actually backed by 1.5 megabits or 3 megabits of Internet bandwidth, they really aren't. ISPs provision backbone access based on the expectation that people usually aren't on the Internet, and even when they are on the Internet most of their time is spent reading the screen, not actively sending or receiving packets.