The ping problem was why i ditched the previous 2 isp's, and i got refunds from both isps when they admitted they actually had a capacity problem causing the high pings to ALL servers. I am currently on option 3, 8Mb broadband, i have gone through customer services and engineers and have written to the customer services director to try  and get some answers. Seems to be the typical broadband problem these days, more and more subscribers and not enough investment in the network to keep up with demand, especially it seems where i live.

Your use of 'pings' is not recommended and can never be a guarantee of service levels as different servers will respond differently. In any case a serious server will simply refuse 'ping' requests as they represent a security risk.

As far as the speed of the line is concerned, you need to find out what has happened in the interim time between you leaving and then rejoining BT. You may also wish to check your account on line and make sure that you are signed up to the fastest speed possible with your tariff.

SHARK! 

3 years ago i joined up with BT broadband, and after the upgrade to the 8Mbs i was getting a line speed of 3.5Mbps. I ditched BT and went to orange broadband due to me exceeding download limits. I was getting the same download speeds with orange, however i had to ditch them due to bad pings and decided to go to Be unlimited 24Mb 4 months ago.  as only getting 4Mbps, which slowly dropped to 3Mbps and then really awful pings so ditched them and decided to go back to BT. I even got an indicated line speed of 3.5Mbps on one of BT's line-speed checkers. However when i signed up i had a maximum download speed of 1.4Mbps. I have run the line speed checker again and it says that the max speed on my line is now 1.5Mbps. I have had the engineers checking the line etc, tried talking to customer service people etc, and all they have told me is that i can't have been getting a line speed of of 3.5 Mbps before (basically they were calling me a liar!). As far as i can tell my house hasn't moved further away from the exchange in 4 the months i had adsl2, but the line speed has halved. Can i expect my speeds to fall even further as more people sign up to broadband, i am currently getting less than 1Mbps download speeds, good pings though :o