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NOt read all the replies so someone here might've already covered it but first off, as has been said, it's not BT doing it deliberately, it's there servers trying to find a stable line speed.
How far are you from the exchange as this can have a severe impact on your speeds. You need to be under 3k for 8Mb... and even then you need to have good quality lines from the exchange to you.
Next, where in the telephone circuit in your house is your modem connected?
You have ONE BT master socket, everything else is an extension and ideally you want to be plugged into that master socket. If that's not feasible, then you want to be as close as you can with as few connections between you and the master socket.
Have a look at the phone wiring behind the socket. How many pairs of wires are connected? All you need is the pair that goes to pins 5 and 2, but you may have another pair connected for the phones to ring. Disconnect the other pair, leaving pins 2 and 5 connected. That other pair is legacy stuff to make a phone ring but a microfilter generates the ring signal internally so you don't need those wires connected and all they're doing is acting like a great big radio antenna and feeding junk noise back into the system.
Be aware that if you're in a modern house with ready fitted extension sockets in the walls, then these will be wired up in series... ie, one socket connects to the next and that connects to the next one etc. The more of these there are the more your signal will be degraded.
What type of micro-filter are you using? Believe me, there's a MASSIVE difference in micro-filters and the ones BT, Virgin etc supply are ok for low speed/strong signal connections but crap for high speed. Have a look at http://www.adslnation.com for a decent microfilter.
If any of these are a problem then you'll have trouble getting a fast speed and the line will automatically be throttled back.
What happens is that the server detects a disconnect becuase of instability in the signal and when your modem redials it automatically attempts to connect at a slower speed where things might be more stable.
There's two ways of deciding your stable speed, the first is to go fast and throttle back until there's no disconnects over a 72hour period. Once that speed is proving stable the line is then usually throttled back by another 10% or so to allow for surges etc and that's your stable connection speed.
The other way is for the line to start off slow and gradually increase in speed. The advantage of this way is that you have continuous service for the duration of the training perios except for when the speed causes instabilities... then you drop back to the last stable speed and again maybe drop down another 10% to cope for errors etc.
Now, even though you think what you're buying from BT is 8Mb, what you're buying is the potential to go to 8Mb depending on all of the above and a whole load of other variables... Look around at other BB suppliers, they all offer 8Mb but it's all theoretical speeds.
So, the best you can do to secure a fast connection is address the issues above. Guess which poor sod here is re-wiring his phone circuit this weekend to get the ready-plumbed in phone socket off being the last in the series? Still, it'll remove around 30 meters of un-needed phone line!
Originally Posted by Dareos
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If you're sync is higher than it's previously been, then you should see your BRAS slowly creep up (and your speeds increase) so long as the line isn't constantly dropping out (reverting to a lower speed because of line quality problems) and remaining stable. Post up on here: 
