Besides when BT do the upgrade to the current FTTC product so there is the possibility of 80Mbps download then Be`s connections are going to look piddly

.. but if they don't address possible backhaul/congestion issues, what would be the point ?
Yes, those on a real short line might be seeing 80meg sync, but if the throughput is ka-ka .......

And given that the acceptable throughput reported by the speed tester is always reported as 12000-nnnnn .....

well not seen much congestion thus far

I had to download a significant amount of image files last week. I was doing them in the evening "peak period" with about 20GB in one session alone. That was taking a little over 4 minutes per GB with the graphs on both TBB meter and Task manager near flat at the maximum throughput for my line (~32Mbps).

Sounds about right. I wonder if you're seeing what I did with BE, Entanet, etc. (that is; always getting top speed for my line, because it was synced lower than the maximum possible for ADSL1/2, so I rarely got chance to see the effects of congestion)?

Even when I had a full 38717 profile (and 39999 sync) I could still max out the connection getting 36500 or slightly more. Then one day - it all stepped down by 3Mbps

In reply to a post by MHC:

Even when I had a full 38717 profile (and 39999 sync) I could still max out the connection getting 36500 or slightly more. Then one day - it all stepped down by 3Mbps

Mine manages to max out on download speeds 24/7. Quite happily got 38717/10000 profile from the start. I doubt my dodgy existing line would have been up to the task though, but it's being binned at the end of the month when we get rid of our Sky package.

In reply to a post by reme8488:

When we get rid of Sky we will all be able to be online at the same time - doing what we all normally do & do it without any stuttering or stammering.

Make sure the wife and daughters are all connected wirelessly and you are wired. Set the wireless connection to a 11Mbps maximum rate and you will be fine.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Set the wireless connection to a 11Mbps maximum rate and you will be fine.

Oddly enough, I can't get anymore than 11Mbps out of my Home Hub3 in the first place (more often than not, its 5.5Mbps), and that's with BT's "better wireless than every other ISP! Turns out they might mean every other ISP has better wireless (i.e. 50%)
BTW; this is with a laptop which, previously, used to be able to max out the wireless on my old DG834GT (so the problem is the HH3 and its "select the same wireless channel as every other nearby router" system).

Not just the HH that does that ... there are many others which will always select Ch1 or Ch6 until the user intervenes. A colleague had some problems with wireless and I went to have a look ... There must have been 20 users on Ch1, a few on 2,3,4,5 and 15 on Ch6 ... Moved her up to 13 and all was fine. The others are still down on where they were and no one is using the higher channels.