While consumers may not be able to solve these market problems, there are things you can do to lessen your chances of being caught up in the mess of broadband congestion. Here are a few simple tips to get you started:

1. Contact your ISP to discuss the problem; it could be a technical issue (e.g. poor ADSL Max profile) that they're able to resolve.
2. Check consumer review and information sites prior to choosing a provider, this will normally help to reveal whether or not there’s a big problem with performance on any given ISP. Searching news archives, forums and related reviews can turn up a lot of interesting information.
3. Try to save/queue any downloads until off-peak (usually late at night) periods when there are fewer people online and thus the network becomes less congested. This makes peak (daytime) usage better for everybody, while some ISP’s also loosen their restrictions at night.
4. If you’ve been on a 2Mbps package for awhile then consider sticking with it rather than “upgrading” to 8Mbps+. On BT based ISP’s such services are often designed around an older standard pricing model (non-CBC), which while more expensive, can perform better.
5. Provided you’re out of contract, consider swapping ISP’s. It’s a gamble and won’t always help, but a different provider can make the world of difference.
6. Avoid choosing a provider that locks you into a 12+ month contract; instead try to select a monthly option. This way you won’t risk incurring a hefty financial penalty if the performance turns out to be poor and you wish to swap again. Be sure to check the small print for ‘EXIT’ fees.
7. Consider paying more (£25+) for a higher quality of connection. While this won’t absolutely guarantee that your broadband performance improves, economics are very important to an ISP and one with enough capital is more likely to have good capacity.
8. It’s possible to find some reasonably affordable ‘business’ broadband packages that run off a lower 20:1 contention. They will cost more (£30+), yet the quality of service and support is often better.

The Future

Happily BT has recently begun to improve its own network by lowering the cost of ADSL lines and capacity. The changes, which took place at the start of May 2007, probably won’t translate into cheaper packages for users and will instead be used to improve capacity or cover existing costs.

BT is also in the process of rolling out its new 21st Century Network (21CN), which will simplify the connection between ISP and supplier, freeing up further capacity. Typically while these things are all good news for providers and thus consumers, it’s worth remembering that they may be off-set by the introduction of faster technologies later in the year (e.g. ADSL2+).

Likewise cable providers and other broadband types, which run off different network designs, have their own congestion problems to resolve. It’s no good ISP's promoting ever faster services if this results in the actual end-user experience degrading. In other words, the problems won't go away overnight and may be around for awhile.

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