I don't live in the best area for Broadband as it is (rural). My local exchange is enabled for the 8Mb Max speed service, but on average I tend to get between 2-3Mb most of the time, and late at night it sometimes creeps above 3Mb, but not that often. I did once even see it up above 4Mb, but only once.

The strange thing is that I've never had a drop in the upload speed, with it always working at the full 448Kb speed, which is OK for seeding.

But this past couple of weeks the download speed seemed to be slower than normal so I've been doing some tests and it is being extremely erratic. Yesterday it was at about 2400Mb, then when I got home late in the evening it seemed really slow to do anything so I checked and it had dropped to 400Kb!!! Which is too slow for me to think that is acceptable. This morning it had gone back up to 1400Mb, and now it is back to 2500Mb.

Has anyone else been experiencing such large changes in their download speeds?

I did some quick searching online and a lot of people seem to be posting on forums saying their broadband connections are getting slower and slower each week and all think something is going on at British Telecom's exchange end of the connection which is causing this. Many think they are overloading the nodes and the only way they are going to fix it is to split them so less people are on each.

I'm going to be ringing my ISP tomorrow morning to ask them about this and to check they haven't actually introduced some sneaky traffic shaping crap on the connection (if they have I'm moving ISP). It does say they will check the connection and if they can't find the reason they will demand BT to open a fault request and make them test the line completely. So fingers crossed it is just some problem on the line and can be fixed.

Very annoying though, especially when you go our leaving a download running at over 200KB/s, coming back later thinking it will have finished and it is still going, but dropped down to something silly like 20KB/s.
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I decided to email my ISP's customer support this afternoon, and have already received an email back, in less than two hours, so that was good service so far (I've not really needed to contact them for a long time).

They confirmed what I thought: "I can certainly see a slight drop in your connection speeds over the last few months that reflects what you are suggesting, however, there is no real reason from my end that I can see what may be causing the issue."

So that is good. Now they are passing this issue on to BT tomorrow so hopefully they will be able to work out what the problem is.
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I hope BT can sort out your problem but at the moment its and arse and elbow situation with BT. I put in a complaint to BT in October and finally got a phonecall back yesterday asking if i'd received any response. Unfortunatly they've been cutting staff to maximise profits and it's customers who are being let down. I live in a rural area and know what it can be like with erratic speeds.
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My ISP never delivers the theoretical maximum download speed either, but only 3 Mbit out of the advertised 8 Mbit? That would be unacceptable to me.

Maybe you should ask your ISP if it'd be fine if you only paid 3/8th of the monthly fee? That'd be perfectly fair, in my opinion! After all, they aren't giving you the product you're paying good money for!
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Sadly that is actually how everyone in the UK has to live with our broadband services. The 8Mb maximum speed is only the theoretical maximum speed and only those living in the local exchange would likely ever see speeds near to that. The average for most customers is closer to 5 or 6Mb/s, and for those of us living in more rural locations who have older lines with more noise we suffer more. BT stated when I did a line speed test that my line would only manage 2-3Mb at most due to the distance and line quality, so I have to accept it.

My ISP have however contacted BT and are waiting to hear back from them. The ISP also stated they are expecting to hear back tomorrow and will inform me of the findings.

Another good thing is that I asked the ISP about traffic shaping in the same email and got this information back in the same reply: "We do not currently have any traffic shaping on our systems, and I do not believe we are planning on introducing this either." So that is a good reason for me to stay with them if i can.
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I have "errotic" broadband speed (which btw is awsome )
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OH GOD HE USED THE FORBIDDEN WORD!!!!!!!
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Aaaargh, wait I'll ban myself.. .. . .... . . . .

Demon Cleaner was kicked out of the forum by a higher force.
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My belief in God has been restored.
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I got another email back from my ISP's support as promised (so that is good). They state that BT have tested my line and have NOT found any problems. However the support have given me a long list of things to run through and test at my end to make sure it isn't an issue or fault with my router or internal phone wiring.

The suspicious thing however is that today my connection speed seems to be much faster again! You have to wonder!
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