said by lordofwhee :

Simple solution: spend the bloody money to upgrade crappy gear.

said by lordofwhee :

I'd be willing to bet people would be willing to pay more for faster speeds (gasp!)

said by openbox9 :

ISPs are spending money to upgrade the infrastructure. Listen to conference calls and look at the balance sheets for the public companies.Relatively few people are willing to pay more for additional bandwidth, evidenced by the popularity of telecoms' low cost offerings of 768 kbps tiers and cablecos "retention" priced tiers.

said by openbox9 :

The retention offers are to obtain new customers? More like to retain customers tired of paying high fees.