I imagine that he either has a pair of bonded T1s or has a partial DS3. No one refers to network bandwidth by summing the incoming and outgoing bandwidths.

But yes, the only reason you pay for T1-type service for data is for uptime and bandwidth guarantees. Chances are that whatever your actual physical connection is isn't really a T1 anyway, especially if you're (IIRC) in NoVA.