Nothing used to piss me off more than the cable customer who used to compain (without logging trouble tickets BTW) that thier home business was losing money because their cable modem was down....
You buy a residential service - thats what you get.
This type of arrogance from a NOC is why NZ has 3rd rate broadband. ADSL and cable are widely marketed to businesses and indeed business connections usually makes up the lions share of revenuw generated by these services. Let's hopen they keep you, and others with the same opinion, in the back room as far from customers as possible -or- put another way you should be using your l33t skills to substantally improve the reliability rather then having too much time on your hands digging for excuses.