My cable company dynamically allocates the bandwidth on the last mile cable so that it only broadcasts what people are currently watching. This ostensibly lets

My cable company dynamically allocates the bandwidth on the last mile cable so that it only broadcasts what people are currently watching. This ostensibly lets them show much higher bandwidth HD shows and have more channels available than they actually have bandwidth for. So in this particular case, it's not as wasted as it could be. I even think this might be why they were recently able to bump up all the internet speeds in my area.