See dude… this is why people think i’m a know it all… i’m not… but actuallly, yes, i do know a little more… LOL… and ROFL @ grnteg98 as i’m sure he’s going to get jacked… i will have to dig up that fios thread 
anyway!!! cable internet is a broadcast technology over a single channel… so no, not multiplexed… sorta though. see comcast runs hybrid coaxle fiber to it’s ‘nodes’ which they don’t refer tot hem as… they call them something dumb… anyway, the node is essentially a switch for a neighborhood… these nodes, using classic infrastructure, are in a sonet ring setup. they use qpsk(Quadrature Phase Shift Keying) for packetizing light over glass and rebuild at the cable modem… so it is sorta multiplexed but not really…
and yes, comcast does ‘steal’ bandwidth, but so does anyone else… i’m sure the verizon argument will be made, but think it through, there aren’t levels of profiling and bandwidth control in all segments of the network, inherent with networks is utilization… so in the end, someone will always ‘steal’ from someone else!
oh and burstable downloads isn’t anything uncommon… think of how a bandwidth algorithm would work… it would have to burst the pipe and sustain to accurately detect and streamline bandwidth.