the two-tier internet system is currently under review by some U.S. agency, don't recall which, but it was discussed in a past issue of "the economist". it means that the fastest, most unthrottled traffic in the states goes to the highest bidders, whilst the sort of traffic we have now in the states will remain in place for the rest of us. by "fastest" I mean the T3 connexions they have in some asian countries, e.g. 30mbps, which will relegate the rest of us to throttled traffic below 6 mbps. the latter figure is further reduced by the fragility of popular servers and their limited throughput capacity, hence the common user is usually limited to much slower speeds.