Most consumer-grade networking problems can be solved with "QoS via excessive bandwidth". But, what the carriers want to do is oversell their backbones by 10,000%, and then charge extra to deliver the kind of service you would have expected to receive in the first place.
Wholesale bandwidth to a Tier 1 provider is ~$15/Mb these days (monthly). This doesn't include loop charges of course. But still Verizon, Comcast, etc. should be able to deliver a symmetrical 5Mbs pipe to an average residence (ie: in a populated suburb) for $60/mo. without the end user every really worrying about running up against capacity for any practical application.
The ISP's are worried about being reduced to "dumb pipes", yet they could easily differentiate based on speed, uptime, customer service and other things that don't rely on packet tagging and prioritizations.