To get from one spot on the internet to another you have to take hops. Some hops get congested because of certain providers. Some people want a better ping. It could be from this that Bellsouth will offer to lower the amount of hops or redirect traffic around congestion for a fee.
But yea, either way it presents a problem since the possibility of impropriety is great. Though I'd pay a little more if they could get my ping lower to some servers.
Don't forget that the ping times point you are making refers to routing, and those conjested points typically affect "areas" of the Internet, not specific sites, rerouting for the benefit of one customer may makes things worse somewhere else.
