It seems like crappy networks are the norm nowadays, and the preference of the ISPs is to offer the web only. You need a middle box just to access the internet at-large (e.g Tor). Masquerading traffic as web traffic appears to be a good tactic, though inefficient/sloppy.

Yeah, but once everything is tunneled over HTTP it will finally fix the network operator problem once and for all since you can't filter applications using ports.