Is Your Broadband Speed Affected By The World Cup?

I have just subscribed to an ADSL2+ broadband service with “unlimited downloads” from Be There. I’m not that pleased with the speeds I’m getting, to be honest, but couldn’t believe how slow it has become during some of the World Cup games.

I normally get just over 8Mb broadband speed, which is, as I said, a bit disappointing for an ADSL2+ service, but yesterday afternoon my download speeds slowed to a crawl.

I checked my router and all seemed well with that and then I suddenly remembered that the football was being played from 3pm. There must have been so many people at my exchange watching the matches over the Internet that bandwidth throttling must have been applied, or contention ratios where going through the roof.

Whilst I wasn’t bothered about watching the Switzerland match yesterday, I guess that my broadband connection will become so unusable tomorrow afternoon when England play that I’ll be forced to watch the match anyway!

Idnet offer a broadband service which gives you prioritised traffic at the exchange. I’m seriously thinking about giving it a try after experiencing the problems with download speeds during some of the matches.

By the way, whilst I’m discussing broadband, if you are interested in Internet connectivity when you are out and about, have you seen the pay as you go mobile broadband comparison table at MoneyHighStreet.com?