I'm back in the UK and have been upgrading my home computing infrastructure. My first step was to upgrade my broadband connection so I switched from Plus.Net to O2 Broadband Premium after doing a bit of research on various UK plans.

O2 Broadband bought out Be Unlimited and offers an ADSL2+ network with download speeds of up to 20 mbps.

I've managed to get a connection of 13,272 kbps (down) and 1325 kbps (up) after getting the noise margin tweaked. It's awesome. Ping times playing online is down around 20ms! Downloads are unlimited. I'm about 1.5 km away from exchange.

The caveat is that to get these speeds, I've had to run wires right to the master socket. If I go through the extension line, the speed drops down to about 5 Mbps.

But the great news is that I'm paying less than I was before! There was no connection fee and I get a discount as an O2 PAYG customer and there's even a cashback through www.quidco.com. It's just £10 a month. Excellent value and I'm a happy customer.