Richard,
I know a few news server admins who might disagree with you. Or at least it
seems that way at times. 
I typically have a 251Kbps (broadband) stream from www.thebasement.com.au
running in the background when on line. The stream is coming out of
Australia (don't think it's been Akakamized yet. Did I spell that right?) so
that stream is on a US backbone. That's in addition to anything else I may
be doing. This is only a single point of data but single points eventually
add up to a bucket.
Additional thoughts. Wonder what that peak traffic would be if individual
sites and services weren't as rate limited as most are by pipe size,
hardware or software? Or how about a 6Gbps HDTV video conference stream
(UCLA (?)- MIT on Internet2).
Just my 2�. The delete key is your friend.
-Al Rowland