A ping only measures the amount of time a signal takes to go from point A (presumably your computer) to point B (a remote destination). It DOES NOT measure the speed of the connection of the remote destination.

Because most of us with broadband connections want to download from others at broadband speeds.... not dial up speeds.

Nope. Let me illustrate this with an example. Let's say you ping a host and it comes back with a ping time of 50ms. Now, how fast is that connection? Is it a modem user, a cable user, a DSL user, a T1 user, or a T3 user? You can't tell until you actually start the download... but the fact remains that a 50ms ping time could come from a 56K modem user just as easily as it could come from a T3 user. Likewise, let's say you get a ping time of 1000ms from a particular connection. Now, how fast is that connection? Again, you can't tell until you start the download. You could get a 1000ms (or higher) ping from any type of connection given the right circumstances.

I would rather see the connection type than any ping nonsense.