After falling foul of Tiscalis fair use policy I found an ISP that claims an Max 8Mb service with no caps, no FUP, no throttling... so I assume it comes down to contention!
Im having problems with latency.. On game servers im getting kicked by punkbuster for having a far too high ping rate. I complained to the ISP and they looked into resulting in great improvements but unfortuately its got worse than ever tonight. I use WinMTR to do a test to Google which comes back averaging 30 to 60m/s.. good i though, but on the EA server site im averaging 600 to 800 m/s!
I only live 800 m from the exchange and wouldn't say my connection is particularly quick averaging only 2Mb in reality. My friend on Virgin / Blueyonder cable 4 M/b service can run two machines at a time and the connection flies much much faster. No cable out here unfortunately!!