Thanks for the tip Seifer. I have recently visited someone who had Perlico Internet and going by their broadband username, the phone company seems to run their broadband over UTVInternet as their ADSL username ended in something like 'utvinternet.com'. However, even though they had a 1Mb service, when I tried IrishISPTest, they were getting around 400kbps to 500kbps like myself on Monday.
So for curiosity sake to start with, I called up BT and asked them about how much it would cost me to switch to the 3Mb service, what the new contract will be after switching and so on. According to them, it is free to upgrade to a faster service, however while there is no minimum duration one must remain on the faster service, they charge an administration fee of €40 to change to a lower speed connection. Once one upgrades to their service, they are charged for the remainder of their billing period at the new subscription price and are refunded for the remainder of the billing period for their old subscription.
The lady also mentioned that the 3Mb service has a lower contention than the 2Mb service, which is one thing I wanted to ensure, especially since both the 1Mb and 2Mb services share the same contention ratio of 1:48, where as from what what I have read around, the 3Mb and higher packages feature a contention ratio of 1:24.
In the end, I decided to go ahead with the upgrade just to see what it is like, since if I find that it does not meet my needs or drops in performance later, I would sooner change to another broadband provider anyway than go back to the slower connection with higher contention, never mind pay the €40 downgrade fee.
Here are a few more speed tests carried out with my existing 2Mb connection, since she mentioned it will take three to five days to activate the new connection:
BT Broadband : 27th July
11.05pm - 580kbps Down, 141kbps Up, QoS 92%, RTT 59ms, MP 178ms
11:28pm - 596kbps Down, 142kbps Up, QoS 76%, RTT 57ms, MP 145ms
12:56am - 1.59Mbps Down, 171kbps Up, QoS 68%, RTT 33ms, MP 326ms
BT Broadband : 28th July
5:38pm - 1.7Mbps Down, 210kbps Up, QoS 99%, RTT 33ms, MP 81ms
6:18pm - 1.7Mbps Down, 183kbps Up, QoS 99%, RTT 33ms, MP 40ms
6:51pm - 1.19Mbps Down, 166kbps Up, QoS 93%, RTT 41ms, MP 79ms
7:45pm - 1.7Mbps Down, 130kbps Up, QoS 99%, RTT 32ms, MP 72ms
8:20pm - 1.61Mbps Down, 169kbps Up, QoS 73%, RTT 46ms, MP 79ms
8:58pm - 1.73Mbps Down, 184kbps Up, QoS 98%, RTT 30ms, MP 68ms
I'm a bit suspicious about why my performance is so much better this evening, considering I use to be lucky to get even 1Mbps on previous Friday evenings in the past month or two and I only requested the upgrade at about 7pm. I rebooted my ZyXEL router and can confirm that it is still connected at 2048k / 256k at this time of writing, so I know I haven't been upgraded yet, unless my line is incapable of handling the 3Mb service.