I heard from a little birdie now that ntl have managed to saturate all their linx ports, and have no plans to upgrade them in the near future and rather just hoping the traffic level drops (they havent responded to other isp's who queuried ntl about the saturation so it is assumed they have no plans), so they think with upgrading burst speed upto 10 times for some customers, double the cap and with mass tv streaming on our doorstep traffic will drop
So I got news for you people we are all in for a surprise unless they change their policy on peering capacity. If a speedtest reports a low speed it does not make it inaccurate or mean its the speedtest server's fault, it is much more likely a peering congestion between ntl and that server. Robin walker and paul's speedtest are simply traffic that doesnt leave ntl's network and isnt an indication of ntl's true internet performance, adslguide speedtest is somewhat more reliable for that, but a lot of speedtest's will use a proxy so that will affect results as well. If you want a true speedtest login to a linux ftp mirror and start downloading an iso.