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Playa:
The difference between streaming and web bandwidth is the amount it costs bandwidth providers to serve -- and thus what they pass on to you as a higher cost.
Bandwidth guys buy their bandwidth from someone else upstream ultimately as well, just in bulk. They pay for it on a 95% peak basis -- in any given month, whatever their peak load is minus 5% is what they pay for the *entire* month. The owners of the infrastructure hardware and lines have to rent it out on a "peak" oriented basis to make certain they are making money even if everyone maxes out their lines at once.
Web bandiwdth is small and bursty and does not tend to max out lines -- it comes up, goes away in a small flash. Streams, on the other hand, come up and consume a lot of resouces for longer periods of time -- they tend to make peaks higher which costs the provider more. So, they pass along that cost to you.
Go ahead and shop around ... you'll see streaming bandwidth and regular bandwidth are NOT treated equally.
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