Everyone in Canada hates him too - this sort of connection isn't the norm. For example, see Rogers and Sympatico pricing. They have a monopoly on the Toronto area, mostly.
I get a rock solid 16 mbps here on the Toronto area for 39.95 and it doesn't matter how many HD channels I'm watching. This is Cogeco using coax and they preassigned a bank for television a bank for voip and a bank for the internet. The crowding is generally a problem of telcos that are sticking with twisted pair (i.e. ADSL)