i just realised something pretty obvious.

Ages ago you used to get charged for how many hours you were online, not how much you downloaded/uploaded.

I remember my mum yelling at me to turn the dialup modem off, because while it was connected, we were paying.

So, it was totally in the interests of the provider to supply a slow connection.
Now, we get charged by the amount of downloads/uploads, so the providers want us to have the fastest connections they can provide....

They want us to be able to download movies and watch streaming tv, and rack up charges...

just a random connection i made....