My cynical guess would be cable de-regulation. They are charging what they figure they can get away with before they start losing customers due to the price.
Peter: What kind of a PC (processor speed/memory) are you using ? I too ran the download test that my ISP (Optimum Online)provides. With my P2 300Mhz 192Mb machine my download rate was similar to yours. I recently bought a P4 2.4GHz 512Mb machine (schweet) and ran the download test on it. My...