Broadband fault SE London?

Is anyone else suffering/aware of broadband problems in SE London, particularly in the SE23 area?

In a nutshell, only about half of websites work (tried various dns servers at both computer and router level which hasn't helped), the speeds get gradually slower until the internet stops working all together. Powercycling the modem is the only way to get things moving again, but this can take multiple tries (and a lot of waiting around) as the flashing tick light (sync light?) takes anywhere between 5-10 mins to lock.

I have rang customer services a number of times to report the problem but seem to get a different explanation each time which makes me slightly sceptical that anyone really is aware of a problem. 1st call I was told there was routine maintenance in the area, 2nd call I was told there was a fault in the area which should be fixed by the morning, 3rd call (next day) I was told there was a signal level issue on "cable 504 upstream 3" but it would likely take engineers 3 or 4 days to sort it out possibly longer.

There is no reference to any maintenance or fault for my area on the VM service page so....anyone know whether CS are just spurting anything to get me off the phone, or is there really a network problem? Would the modem stats show a network problem?

I suspect we have some National Problems

I'm on the Renfrew UBR , and I've just had 4 emails in from much earlier today [ they weren't successive ones either ] for the THIRD time

I had it yesterday with DNS> Changed mine to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 which is google and the problem was sorted.

We've suffered with terrible connection speeds since August 2010.

SE14.