In theory, Be is contended, but they have assured that they will ensure that contention is kept to an absolute minimum and I can confirm that this is true. I certainly haven't experienced much and there as far as I know there are at least 4 other users connected to the same exchange as me, Highams Park. We'll have to see what happens when O2 lauch their broadband packages and we see more users coming on board. Nothing has changed at the moment, but is very likely to in the future, but hoping this will apply mostly to new customers joining via O2.
I'm currently syncing at 9100 kbps down and did a speed test with MySpeed last night which came out at around 7600 kbps down which is about right when you take into account that you lose about 13% throughput with overheads
The Office package may be totally uncontended - Be give very little away, so it's difficult to tell these things.
The review was extremely basic and didn't appear to show that very much had been tested, but I was going on the view that the review was for the overall connection / migration process rather than the service itself.
Took me a few minutes to get my MAC from BT and I was connected in about 10 days including a weekend and bank holiday when my exchange was enabled on 26th May.
I don't have a subscription to IT Week and can access the article fine
http://www.itweek.co.uk/itweek/software/2164454/tested-24kbit-broadband
Nicola
Be* Unlimited