OK this is weird. Yesterday I got tired of waiting for my new Broadband plan to kick in so I went to the Telecom website and manually requested a plan change to the new Aventure plan (3.5mbps down / 128kbps up). My old plan was Broadband Plus (2mbps down / 128 kbps up.)

At about 3pm, my Broadband connection dropped so I reconnected and then went to Xtra's usage meter and as suspected my new plan had been activated. This is where is gets weird.

I have an Alcatel Speedtouch 330 USB modem, and in the past upon connection it has always reported a speed of 7.8mbps. I have always understood that this is not my actual speed but the speed at which the modem talks to my PC (i.e. the USB bus speed). However, eversince the change this figure is now 4.2mbps. In the three years I have had Broadband this is the first time the figure has ever been different. I have tried rebooting several times and it is now always 4.2mbps.

But even stranger yet - the speed of my connection has reduced dramatically. In the past I have been enjoying speeds of around 250kB/s when downloading torrents etc., now the highest speed I have experienced is 101kB/s. And when it was at this speed my web browsing slowed to a crawl, so this appears to it maxing out. When I run the speed test at the Jetstream Games website (on Xtra's own servers), it reports a speed of around 1.6mbps.

Before I phone Xtra and ask them wtf is going on, does anyone have any comments or advice for me?

Thank you!

Steve