ping and tracert through the roof.. SKY not bothered

Hi all,
I am on the Kenton exchange with Sky Broadband unlimited. been with them for about a year and had no problems. for the last couple of weeks browsing has become painful.. the reason is :
Ping has started�

PING a1065.b.akamai.net (90.223.216.153): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 90.223.216.153: icmp_seq=0 ttl=60 time=776.651 ms
64 bytes from 90.223.216.153: icmp_seq=1 ttl=60 time=812.862 ms
64 bytes from 90.223.216.153: icmp_seq=2 ttl=60 time=798.741 ms
64 bytes from 90.223.216.153: icmp_seq=3 ttl=60 time=796.862 ms
64 bytes from 90.223.216.153: icmp_seq=4 ttl=60 time=823.958 ms

tracert is not any better:
Traceroute has started�

traceroute to www.google.co.uk (74.125.132.94), 64 hops max, 72 byte packets
1 skyrouter.home (192.168.0.1) 1.260 ms 0.741 ms 0.651 ms
2 02dbd8fe.bb.sky.com (2.219.216.254) 24.352 ms 24.657 ms 23.511 ms
3 * * *
4 02780812.bb.sky.com (2.120.8.18) 572.475 ms 591.569 ms 591.655 ms
5 89.200.131.173 (89.200.131.173) 610.852 ms 615.341 ms 639.564 ms
6 * 72.14.215.13 (72.14.215.13) 724.765 ms 756.261 ms
7 209.85.240.61 (209.85.240.61) 778.297 ms 796.186 ms 814.845 ms
8 209.85.253.94 (209.85.253.94) 818.487 ms 852.318 ms 854.721 ms
9 72.14.232.134 (72.14.232.134) 870.125 ms 885.697 ms 893.119 ms
10 216.239.49.45 (216.239.49.45) 916.607 ms 149.230 ms 42.674 ms
11 * * *
12 www.google.co.uk (74.125.132.94) 1144.679 ms 4009.457 ms 3575.068 ms

The lady maning the phone on sky's customer service was very polite but was very clearly way out of her depth as she tried to follow a pre-written script asking me to reboot my laptop and do this that and the other. I have tried to explain that something is a miss with their network and that no matter what device I used, be it a handheld or a PC or and apple mac the same problem is replicated. she kept asking me to disable all programes accessing the internet on my laptop. I patiently explained that I am well aware of bandwidth hogging processes and that I have network monitoring tools on my laptop that are assuring me there is network hogging services running... she was not listening. I even said that even if all the PCs are switched off my iPhone browser is so slow in turning internet pages and that this is explainable by the tracert stats above. again no result.

She agreed at the end to escalate to level two. I am yet to hear from them and TBH I am NOT happy the way the are handling this issue so far. I feel Zen will have a new customer soon

just another one, which is not the worst I have seen:

Ping has started�

PING a1065.b.akamai.net (90.223.216.178): 56 data bytes
Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
64 bytes from 90.223.216.178: icmp_seq=0 ttl=60 time=1168.089 ms
64 bytes from 90.223.216.178: icmp_seq=1 ttl=60 time=1157.684 ms
64 bytes from 90.223.216.178: icmp_seq=2 ttl=60 time=1144.840 ms
64 bytes from 90.223.216.178: icmp_seq=3 ttl=60 time=1154.978 ms
64 bytes from 90.223.216.178: icmp_seq=4 ttl=60 time=1152.807 ms

--- a1065.b.akamai.net ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1144.840/1155.680/1168.089/7.540 ms

Latency seems to start after the hop below, can't replicate it:

Pinging 2.219.216.254 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 2.219.216.254: bytes=32 time=36ms TTL=57
Reply from 2.219.216.254: bytes=32 time=35ms TTL=57
Reply from 2.219.216.254: bytes=32 time=36ms TTL=57
Reply from 2.219.216.254: bytes=32 time=35ms TTL=57

Ping statistics for 2.219.216.254:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 35ms, Maximum = 36ms, Average = 35ms

Still ongoing?

today's

Ping has started�

PING a1065.b.akamai.net (23.61.254.200): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 23.61.254.200: icmp_seq=0 ttl=58 time=736.592 ms
64 bytes from 23.61.254.200: icmp_seq=1 ttl=58 time=731.458 ms
64 bytes from 23.61.254.200: icmp_seq=2 ttl=58 time=766.808 ms
64 bytes from 23.61.254.200: icmp_seq=3 ttl=58 time=774.327 ms
64 bytes from 23.61.254.200: icmp_seq=4 ttl=58 time=796.726 ms

--- a1065.b.akamai.net ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 731.458/761.182/796.726/24.315 ms

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/22/sky_broadban...

I think Sky really underestimated the impact their fibre products would have in area where take up is high. We had 3 months of slow peak time internet in Hastings until the backhaul was upgraded back in November last year.