"Strange fear. What would be the business case for this?"

The business case is this: "This has everything to do with overselling and nothing to do with prioritization."

Almost all ISPs oversell. Thats how they make maximum profit.

The business case for aforementioned practices is - in order to provide quality service for latency sensitive packets in a FIFO you have to be massively overbuilt. If you think any ISP is going to overbuild or over-peer so your Counterstrike ping stays at 40ms your nuts.

People arent going to pay more money for the ultra wide connections where the service in general is shit. Some different tiers and types of package also have prioritization, at least with TWC where I live.

The fear is they just throw the whole business to the dogs, do nothing with it other than make cash on existing infrastructure - because there is no real incentive for them to do anything else.

For who could be free when every other man's humour might domineer over him? - John Locke (2nd Treatise, sect 57)