This one is too funny to be true folks, whilst complaining that they do not have enough bandwidth already to service P2P and other high bandwidth users the same companies turn around and cite lack of demand for not improving the service, a case of the forked tongue ?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7115338.stmWithout the obvious need for more bandwidth it is hard for companies such as BT to justify committing to a multi-billion spend on new networks.
"No-one is screaming for 50Mbps now aside from a few geeks who won't really do anything useful with it but at the same time it is remarkable people's ability to use capacity," said Tim Johnson, chief analyst at broadband research firm Point Topic.
For many the case for fast networks is one of "build it and they will come".
UK internet service provider PlusNet has noticed a marked increase in the amount of downloading its users are doing - up to 6.4 gigabytes per month from 5 gigabytes this time last year.
When it upgraded customers to a 8Mbps connection - which is the service 70% of its users now have - it saw a 25% increase in usage.
"Every time we've seen an increase in speed, applications have come along to swallow it up," said Neil Armstrong, product director at PlusNet.
According to Nielsen Online, some 21 million Britons (63% of those online) visited TV, video and movies sites in September 2007, which is a rise of 28% from the same time last year with the time they spent on these sites up 91%.
"Britons are displaying an increasingly significant appetite for supplementing their viewing habits online," said Nielsen Online analyst Alex Burmeister.
I will of course send these quotes to anyone complaining that p2p users are consuming more than their fair share of the capacity, the fact is they actually pay more for that capacity that do most e-mail readers often cited as the reason behind throttling and other tricks played on the consumer by ISP companies who oversell their service and require a scapegoat.