| It's extremely bad. The fact that ISP monopolies
  | are not regulated in favor of consumers is slowly
  | going to destroy the openness that has made the
  | web so successful.

This is a little over the top. Whether or not to use this to notify users of time-sensitive information could be a question posed at even a small ISP without such 'evil ambitions.'

It's probably more useful to discuss the pros/cons of this approach to notifying users than it is to decry over-arching problems with the entire industry. These (over-arching industry issuse) have been discussed ad nauseum, and action is more useful than discussion at this point (at least on technical forums such as this).

  | But the federal regulators of the monopolies
  | are asleep at the switch

Look up regulatory capture.