BT goes faster! But at what cost?

So BT have finally decided to up their speed. However, the cost of their new BT Broadband Accelerator, part of its Home IT Support Service, is £90 a month. On the one hand, for a consumer such as myself I don't know if it is worth it at the moment. The minimum increase in speed is o.5Mbps and this increase can come about through optimizing your PC, checking the wiring, plugging the modem into the master plug and even by fixing faulty wiring or other household electrical applicances. But it's still too much for me, living with 3 flatmates in a 400-year-old cottage. Primarily because when you have 4 people downloading at the same time it will affect your connection and secondly because no amount of rewiring will help with the electrics in a house as old as mine.

On the other hand, if you run an office out of your house, this could cut out the IT man. If your livelihood depends on being online at any given time and using high speeds to get things done quickly, then it is worth having a technician come over and help you figure out how to make your broadband run faster. In fact, it might even lower your business costs, as faulty wiring and appliances or malfunctioning lights might be using up unnecessary amounts of power. In that case the £90 price is not out of the question. BT are also to launch a product called iPlate, which will supposedly boost broadband speeds and comes to £10, a much more realistic purchase for a consumer such as myself.

This all sounds great, but I have raise the issue of BT's competitors. Because if you check out average speeds, you will notice that BT is not at the top of that list. Not by a longshot...