An example set of rules could be:
1. Periodic monitoring of connection speeds is to be expected, and any action requires a minimum of X samples (say, X=10). Measurements may be performed by any party and the measurement method must be fully disclosed. If more than 30% of samples are failing to meet advertised Internet speeds by at least 5%, or any one sample is more than 50% below advertised speed, customer is entitled to a one-day refund of Internet fees. If more than 5 total occurrences in a single calendar month are failing, customer is entitled to a 15-day refund of Internet fees.
2. If the Internet becomes unusable for more than 10 minutes at a time in a single month and the outage can be traced to ISP-given equipment, customer is entitled to a one-day refund of Internet fees. If Internet is unusable multiple times, customer is entitled to a 5-day refund.
3. If company has cause to adjust Internet delivery expectations (such as, too many additional customers to serve original speeds on pipe to same area), existing customers are all immediately released from any contracts and may terminate service immediately with no penalties. In additional, ISP is liable for crediting customer monthly bills for the remainder of service, proportional to the difference in service speed with a 10% penalty for violation of original contract by the ISP.
4. Internet is considered a separate service and may not be bundled with anything else.
And it doesn’t even have to say this much to be a huge improvement. The point is that companies have been getting away with lousy services FOR YEARS and appear to be largely unpunished, while meanwhile the number of customers overpaying and not receiving stable and promised service numbers in the millions.