BT Broadband 20MB Unlimited Package - Max 60KB/s DL speeds

[Firdelore]

I've been on this deal for several years now, and have never reached higher than 60KB/s download speeds. I know that the package does not mean I get 20MB, but I can get up to 20MB... The fact is though, I am not even getting 0.01% of what I could potentially get (yes, I can use a calculator).

What this means is I can not get anything done with these low speeds. A 10 minute YouTube video at 360p quality takes at least twice the time to load. It's funny how in 2005, the definition of a broadband speed was at least 50KB/s, but now in 2011, it's considered 4MB/s.

So my question is:
What can I do? Should I swap to another provider? Would that even help? Apparently, my connection cannot exceed over 1MB in speed - if I could get half of that, I would one happy man.

Is there an option to get an engineer to come over and check out our cables? See if there are any particular objects that could be obstructing my connection? I didn't actually mind until recently, as my main focus with the internet is online gaming, which was alright, as it was stable. I had a power cut for about 2 hours last week and since then, I have been suffering from lag spikes every once in while, which rendered me unable to play any team oriented games.

Anyway, I would appreciate it if anyone could give me some advice; preferably from people that have through a similar situation and managed to solve it.

Thanks again.

[Sputnik]

Is there an option to get an engineer to come over and check out our cables? See if there are any particular objects that could be obstructing my connection?

You could get them to come out but, If the fault is on your wiring after the master socket or they don't find a fault you'll have to pay them for the call out.

First I'd do a check to see what you line should be capable of. Have a look at the stats to see what your line attenuation is and see if the two match.

Try connecting the modem directly to the Master socket of the house with all extentions disconnected and see if it improves. If you have an NTE5 type socket you can just unscrew the lower front socket and plug directly into the test socket inside.